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With a Critical Introduction by 
HENRY JAMES 



ILLUSTRATED 




THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

FEB 6 1903 

* Copyright Entry 
V COPY B. 



' Copyright, 1902, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



(?a±B 

5- L l3Ho 



HONORE DE BALZAC 



1 

Stronger than ever, even than under the spell of 
first acquaintance and of the early time, is the sense — 
thanks to a renewal of intimacy and, I am tempted 
to say, of loyalty — that Balzac stands signally alone, 
that he is the first and foremost member of his craft, v 
and that, above all, the Balzac-lover is in no position 
till he has cleared the ground by saying so. The Bal- 
zac-lover only, for that matter, is worthy to have his 
word, on so happy an occasion as this, about the au- 
thor of La Comedie Humaine, and it is indeed not easy 
to see how the amount of attention so inevitably in- 
duced could, at the worst, have failed to find itself 
turning to an act of homage. I have been deeply 
affected, to be frank, by the mere refreshment of mem- 
ory, which has brought in its train, moreover, con- 
sequences critical and sentimental too numerous to 
figure here in their completeness. The authors and 
the books that have, as the phrase is, done something 
for us, formed a solid part of the answer to our cu- 
riosity when our curiosity had the freshness of youth, 
these particular agents exist for us, with the lapse of 



Honore de Balzac 

time, as the substance itself of knowledge: they have 
been intellectually so swallowed, digested, and assimi- 
lated that we take their general use and suggestion for 
granted, cease to be aware of them because they have 
passed out of sight. But they have passed out of 
sight simply by having passed into our lives. They 
have become a part of our personal history, a part of 
ourselves, very often, so far as we may have succeeded 
in best expressing ourselves. Endless, however, are 
the uses of great persons and great things, and it may 
easily happen in these cases that the connection, even 
as an " excitement " — the form mainly of the connec- 
tions of youth — is never really broken. We have 
largely been living on our benefactor — which is the 
highest acknowledgment one can make; only, thanks 
to a blessed law that operates in the long run to re- 
kindle excitement, we are accessible to the sense of 
having neglected him. Even when we may not con- 
stantly have read him over the neglect is quite an illu- 
sion, but the illusion perhaps prepares us for the 
finest emotion we are to have owed to the acquaint- 
ance. Without having abandoned or denied our au- 
thor, we yet come expressly back to him, and if not 
quite in tatters and in penitence like the Prodigal 
Son, with something at all events of the tenderness 
with which we revert to the parental threshold and 
hearthstone, if not, more fortunately, to the parental 
presence. The beauty of this adventure, that of see- 
ing the dust blown off a relation that had been put 
away as on a shelf, almost out of reach, at the back 

vi 



Honore de Balzac 

of one's mind, consists in finding the precious object 
not only fresh and intact, but with its firm lacquer 
still further figured, gilded, and enriched. It is all 
overscored with traces and impressions — vivid, defi- 
nite, almost as valuable as itself — of the recognitions 
and agitations it originally produced in us. Our old 
— that is our young — feelings are, very nearly, what 
page after page most gives us. The case has become 
a case of authority plus association. If Balzac in him- 
self is indubitably wanting in the sufficiently common 
felicity we know as charm, it is this association that 
may on occasion contribute the glamour. 

The impression then, confirmed and brightened, 
is of the mass and weight of the figure, and of the 
extent of ground it occupies; a tract on which we 
really might all of us together pitch our little tents, 
open our little booths, deal in our little wares, and 
not materially either diminish the area or impede the 
circulation of the occupant. I seem to see him in 
such an image moving about as Gulliver among the 
pigmies, and not less good-natured than Gulliver for 
the exercise of any function, without exception, that 
can illustrate his larger life. The first and the last 
word about the author of Les Contes Drolatiques is that 
of all novelists he is the most serious — by which I am 
far from meaning that in the human comedy as he 
shows it the comic is an absent quantity. His sense 
of the comic was on the scale of his extraordinary 
senses in general, though his expression of it suffers 
perhaps exceptionally from that odd want of elbow- 

vii 



Honore de Balzac 

room — the penalty somehow of his close-packed, 
pressed-down contents — which reminds us of some 
designedly beautiful thing but half-disengaged from 
the clay or the marble. It is the scheme and the 
scope that are supreme in him, applying it, moreover, 
not to mere great intention, but to the concrete form, 
the proved case, in which we possess them. We most 
of us aspire to achieve at the best but a patch here 
and there, to pluck a sprig or a single branch, to 
break ground in a corner of the great garden of life. 
Balzac's plan was simply to do all, to give the whole 
thing. He proposed to himself to turn over the great 
garden from north to south and from east to west; a 
task — immense, heroic, to this day immeasurable — 
that he bequeathed us the partial performance of, a 
huge imperfect block, in the twenty monstrous years, 
years of concentration and sacrifice the vision of 
which still makes us ache, representing his productive 
career. He had indeed a striking good fortune, 
the only one he was to enjoy as an harassed and ex- 
asperated worker: the great garden of life presented 
itself to him absolutely and exactly in the guise of the 
great garden of France, a subject vast and compre- 
hensive enough, yet with definite edges and corners. 
This identity of his universal with, so to speak, his 
local, national vision is the particular thing we should 
doubtless call his greatest strength were we preparing 
agreeably to speak of it also as his visible weakness. 
Of Balzac's weaknesses, however, it takes some as- 
surance to talk; there is always plenty of time for 

viii 



Honore de Balzac 

them; they are the last signs we know him by; such 
things, truly, as in other painters of manners often 
pass for the exuberances of power. So little in short 
do they earn that name even when we feel them as 
defects. 

What he did above all was to read the universe, 
as hard and as loud as he could, into the France of his 
time; his own eyes regarding his work as at once the 
drama of man and a mirror of the mass of social phe- 
nomena, the social state, the most rounded and regis- 
tered, most organized and administered, and thereby 
most exposed to systematic observation and por- 
trayal, that the world had seen. There are happily 
other interesting societies, but these are, for schemes 
of such an order, comparatively loose and incoherent, 
with more extent and perhaps more variety, but with 
less of the great inclosed and exhibited quality, less 
neatness and sharpness of arrangement, fewer cate- 
gories, subdivisions, juxtapositions. Balzac's France 
was both inspiring enough for an immense prose epic 
and reducible enough for a report or a table. To 
allow his achievement all its dignity we should doubt- 
less say also treatable enough for a history, since it 
was as a patient historian, a Benedictine of the actual, 
the living painter of his living time, that he regarded 
himself and handled his material. All painters of man- 
ners and fashions, if we will, are historians, even when 
they least put on the uniform: Fielding, Dickens, 
Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne, among our- 
selves. But the great difference between the great 

ix 



Honore de Balzac 

Frenchman and the eminent others is that, with an 
imagination of the highest power, an unequalled in- 
tensity of vision, he saw his subject in the light of 
science as well, in the light of the bearing of all its 
parts on each other, and under pressure of a passion 
for exactitude, an appetite, the appetite of an ogre, 
for all the kinds of facts. We find, I think, in the 
combination here suggested something like the truth 
about his genius, the nearest approach to a final ac- 
count of him. Of imagination, on one side, all com- 
pact, he was on the other an insatiable reporter of the 
immediate, the material, the current combination, per- 
petually moved by the historian's impulse to fix them, 
preserve them, explain them. One asks one's self as 
one reads him what concern the poet has with so 
much arithmetic and so much criticism, so many sta- 
tistics and documents, what concern the critic and the 
economist have with so many passions, characters, 
and adventures. The contradiction is always before 
us; it springs from the inordinate scale of the author's 
two faces; it explains more than anything else his 
eccentricities and difficulties. It accounts for his 
want of grace, his want of the lightness associated 
with an amusing literary form, his bristling surface, 
his closeness of texture, so suggestive, yet at the 
same time so akin to the crowded air we have in mind 
when we speak of not being able to see the wood for 
the trees. 

A thorough-paced votary, for that matter, can 
easily afford to declare at once that this confounding 



Honore de Balzac 

duality of character does more things still, or does at 
least the most important of all — introduces us with- 
out mercy (mercy for ourselves, I mean) to the oddest 
truth we could have dreamed of meeting in such a 
connection. It was certainly a priori not to be ex- 
pected we should feel it of him, but our hero is, after 
all, not, in his magnificence, totally an artist: which 
would be the strangest thing possible, one must hasten 
to add, were not the smallness of the practical differ- 
ence so made even stranger. His endowment and 
his effect are each so great that the anomaly makes 
at the most a difference only by adding to his interest 
for the critic. The critic worth his salt is indiscreetly 
curious and wants ever to know how and why — 
whereby Balzac is thus a still rarer case for him, sug- 
gesting that curiosity may have exceptional rewards. 
The question of what makes the artist, on a great 
scale, is interesting enough; but we feel it in Balzac's 
company to be nothing to the question of what, on an 
equal scale, frustrates him. The scattered pieces, the 
disjecta membra, of the character are here so numerous 
and so splendid that they prove misleading; we pile 
them together, and the heap, assuredly, is monumen- 
tal; it forms an overtopping figure. The genius this 
figure stands for, none the less, is really such a lesson 
to the artist as perfection itself would be powerless to 
give; it carries him so much further into the special 
mystery. Where it carries him, however, I must not 
in this scant space attempt to say — which would be a 
loss of the fine thread of my argument. I stick to 

xi 



Honore de Balzac 

our point in putting it, more concisely, that the artist 
of the Comedie Humaine is half smothered by the his- 
torian. Yet it belongs as well to the matter also to 
meet the question of whether the historian himself 
may not be an artist, in which case Balzac's catas- 
trophe would seem to lose its excuse. The answer 
of course is that the reporter, however philosophic, 
has one law, and the creator, however substantially 
fed, has another; so that the two laws can with no 
sort of harmony or congruity make, for the finer sense, 
a common household. Balzac's catastrophe — so to 
name it once again — was in this perpetual conflict and 
final impossibility, an impossibility that explains his 
defeat on the classic side and extends so far at times 
as to make us think of his work as, from the point of 
view of beauty, a tragic waste of effort. 

What it would come to, we judge, is that the ir- 
reconcilability of the two kinds of law is, more simply 
expressed, but the irreconcilability of two different 
ways of composing one's work. The principle of com- 
position that his free imagination would have, or cer- 
tainly might have, handsomely imposed on him is 
perpetually dislocated by the quite opposite principle 
of the earnest seeker, the inquirer to a useful end, in 
whom nothing is free but a born antipathy to his 
yoke-fellow. Such a production as Le Cure de Village, 
the wonderful story of Mine. Graslin, so nearly a 
masterpiece, yet so ultimately not one, would be, in 
this connection, could I take due space for it, a perfect 
illustration. If, as I say, Mme. Graslin's creator was 

xii 



Honore de Balzac 

confined by his doom to patches and pieces, no piece 
is finer than the first half of the book in question, the 
half in which the picture is determined by his un- 
equalled power of putting people on their feet, plant- 
ing them before us in their habit as they lived — a 
faculty nourished by observation as much as one will, 
but with the inner vision all the while wide-awake, the 
vision for which ideas are as living as facts and assume 
an equal intensity. This intensity, greatest indeed in 
the facts, has in Balzac a force all its own, to which 
none other in any novelist I know can be likened. 
His touch communicates on the spot to the object, 
the creature evoked, the hardness and permanence 
that certain substances, some sorts of stone, acquire by 
exposure to the air. The hardening medium, for the 
image soaked in it, is the air of his mind. It would 
take but little more to make the peopled world of fic- 
tion as we know it elsewhere affect us by contrast as a 
world of rather gray pulp. This mixture of the solid 
and the vivid is Balzac at his best, and it prevails with- 
out a break, without a note not admirably true, in 
Le Cure de Village — since I have named that instance 
— up to the point at which Mme. Graslin moves out 
from Limoges to Montegnac in her ardent passion of 
penitence, her determination to expiate her strange 
and undiscovered association with a dark misdeed by 
living and working for others. Her drama is a par- 
ticularly inward one, interesting, and in the highest 
degree, so long as she herself, her nature, her be- 
haviour, her personal history, and the relations in 

xiii 



Honore de Balzac 

which they place her, control the picture and feed 
our illusion. The firmness with which the author 
makes them play this part, the whole constitution of 
the scene and of its developments from the moment 
we cross the threshold of her dusky, stuffy old-time 
birth-house, is a rare delight, producing in the reader 
that sense of local and material immersion which is 
one of Balzac's supreme secrets. What characteris- 
tically befalls, however, is that the spell accompanies 
us but part of the way — only until, at a given moment, 
his attention ruthlessly transfers itself from inside to 
outside, from the centre of his subject to its circum- 
ference. 

This is Balzac caught in the very fact of his mon- 
strous duality, caught in his most complete self-ex- 
pression. He is clearly quite unwitting that in 
handing over his data to his twin-brother the impas- 
sioned economist and surveyor, the insatiate general 
inquirer and reporter, he is in any sort betraying our 
confidence, for his good conscience at such times, the 
spirit of edification in him, is a lesson even to the 
best of us, his rich, robust temperament nowhere more 
striking, no more marked anywhere the great push of 
the shoulder with which he makes his theme move, 
overcharged though it may be like a carrier's van. 
It is not therefore, assuredly, that he loses either 
sincerity or power in putting before us to the last de- 
tail such a matter as, in this case, his heroine's man- 
agement of her property, her tenantry, her economic 
opportunities and visions, for these are cases in which 

xiv 



Honore de Balzac 

he never shrinks nor relents, in which, positively, he 
stiffens and terribly towers, reminds us again of M. 
Taine's simplifying sentence, his being a great painter 
doubled with a man of business. Balzac was indeed 
doubled, if ever a writer was, and to that extent that 
we almost as often, while we read, feel ourselves think- 
ing of him as a man of business doubled with a great 
painter. Whichever way we turn it the oddity never 
fails, nor the wonder of the ease with which either 
character bears the burden of the other. I use the 
word burden because, as the fusion is never complete 
— witness in the book before us the fatal break of 
" tone," the one unpardonable sin for the novelist — 
we are beset by the conviction that, but for this 
strangest of dooms, one or other of the two partners 
might, to our relief and to his own, have been dis- 
embarrassed. The disembarrassment, for each, by a 
more insidious fusion, would probably have produced 
the master of the interest proceeding from form, or 
at all events the seeker for it, that Balzac fails to be. 
Perhaps the possibility of an artist constructed on 
such strong lines is one of those fine things that are 
not of this world, a mere dream of the fond critical 
spirit. Let these speculations and condonations at 
least pass as the amusement, as a result of the high 
spirits — if high spirits be the word — of the reader 
feeling himself again in touch. It was not of our 
author's difficulties — that is of his difficulty, the great 
one — that I proposed to speak, but of his immense 
positive effect. Even that, truly, is not an impression 

xv 



Honore de Balzac 

of ease, and it is strange and striking that we are in 
fact so attached by his want of the unity that keeps 
surfaces smooth and dangers down as scarce to feel 
sure at any moment that we shall not come back to it 
with most curiosity. We are never so curious about 
successes as about interesting failures. The more 
reason therefore to speak promptly, and once for all, 
of the scale on which, in its own quarter of his genius, 
success worked itself out for him. 

It is to that I should come back — to the infinite 
reach in him of the painter and the poet. We can 
never know what might have become of him with 
less importunity in his consciousness of the machinery 
of life, of its furniture and fittings, of all that, right 
and left, he causes to assail us, sometimes almost to 
suffocation, under the general rubric of things. 
Things, in this sense, with him, are at once our de- 
light and our despair; we pass from being inordinate- 
ly beguiled and convinced by them to feeling that his 
universe fairly smells too much of them, that the 
larger ether, the diviner air, is in peril of finding 
among them scarce room to circulate. His land- 
scapes, his " local colour " — thick, in his pages, at a 
time when it was to be found in his pages almost 
alone — his towns, his streets, his houses, his Saumurs, 
Angoulemes, Guerandes, his great prose Turner- 
views of the land of the Loire, his rooms, shops, in- 
teriors, details of domesticity and traffic, are a short 
list of the terms into which he saw the real as clam- 
ouring to be rendered and into which he rendered 

xvi 



Honore de Balzac 

it with unequalled authority. It would be doubtless 
more to the point to make our profit of this consum- 
mation than to try to reconstruct a Balzac planted 
more in the open. We hardly, as the case stands, 
know most whether to admire in such an example as 
the short tale of La Grenadiere the exquisite feeling 
for " natural objects " with which it overflows like a 
brimming wine-cup, the energy of perception and 
description which so multiplies them for beauty's 
sake, and for the love of their beauty, or the general 
wealth of genius that can count so little and spend so 
joyously. The tale practically exists for the sake of 
the enchanting aspects involved — those of the em- 
bowered white house that nestles, on its terraced hill, 
above the great French river, and we can think, frank- 
ly, of no one else with an equal amount of business on 
his hands who would either have so put himself out 
for aspects or made them, almost by themselves, a 
living subject. A born son of Touraine, it must be 
said, he pictures his province, on every pretext and 
occasion, with filial passion and extraordinary 
breadth. The prime aspect in his scene, all the while, 
it must be added, is the money aspect. The general 
money question so loads him up and weighs him down 
that he moves through the human comedy, from be- 
ginning to end, very much in the fashion of a camel, 
the ship of the desert, surmounted with a cargo. 
" Things " for him are francs and centimes more than 
any others, and I give up as inscrutable, unfathom- 
able, the nature, the peculiar avidity of his interest 

xvii 



Honore de Balzac 

in them. It makes us wonder again and again what 
then is the use, on Balzac's scale, of the divine faculty. 
The imagination, as we all know, may be employed up 
to a certain point, in inventing uses for money; but its 
office beyond that point is surely to make us forget 
that anything so odious exists. This is what Balzac 
never forgot; his universe goes on expressing itself 
for him, to its furthest reaches, on its finest sides, in 
the terms of the market. To say these things, how- 
ever, is, after all, to come out where we want, to sug- 
gest his extraordinary scale and his terrible complete- 
ness. I am not sure that he does not see character 
too, see passion, motive, personality, as quite in the 
order of the " things " we have spoken of. He makes 
them no less concrete and palpable, handles them no 
less directly and freely. It is the whole business, in 
fine — that grand total to which he proposed to him- 
self to do high justice — that gives him his place apart, 
makes him, among the novelists, the largest, weight- 
iest presence. There are some of his obsessions — 
that of the material, that of the financial, that of the 
" social," that of the technical, political, civil — for 
which I feel myself unable to judge him, judgment 
losing itself, unexpectedly, in a particular shade of 
pity. The way to judge him is to try to walk all 
round him — on which we see how remarkably far we 
have to go. He is the only member of his order really 
monumental, the sturdiest-seated mass that rises in 
our path. 



xvin 



Honore de Balzac 



ii 

We recognise, none the less, that the finest con- 
sequence of these re-established relations is linked 
with just that appearance in him, that obsession of 
the actual under so many heads, that makes us look 
at him, as we would at some rare animal in captivity, 
between the bars of a cage. It amounts to a kind of 
doom, since to be solicited by the world from all quar- 
ters at once — what is that, for the spirit, but a denial 
of escape? We feel his doom to be his want of a pri- 
vate "door, and that he felt it, though more obscurely, 
himself. When we speak of his want of charm, there- 
fore, we perhaps so surrender the question as but to 
show our own poverty. If charm, to cut it short, is 
what he lacks, how comes it that he so touches and 
holds us that — above all, if we be actual or possible 
fellow-workers — we are uncomfortably conscious of 
the disloyalty of almost any shade of surrender? We 
are lodged perhaps by our excited sensibility in a di- 
lemma of which one of the horns is a compassion that 
savours of patronage; but we must resign ourselves to 
that by reflecting that our tenderness at least takes 
nothing away from him. It leaves him solidly where 
he is and only brings us near, brings us to a view of all 
his formidable parts and properties. The conception 
of the Comedie Humaine represents them all, and 
represents them mostly in their felicity and their tri- 
umph — or at least the execution does: in spite of 
which we irresistibly find ourselves thinking of him, 
b xix 



Honore de Balzac 

in reperusals, as most essentially the victim of a cruel 
joke. The joke is one of the jokes of fate, the fate 
that rode him for twenty years at so terrible a pace 
and with the whip so constantly applied. To have 
wanted to do so much, to have thought it possible, 
to have faced and in a manner resisted the effort, to 
have felt life poisoned and consumed, in fine, by such 
a bravery of self-committal — these things form for us 
in him a face of trouble that, oddly enough, is not 
appreciably lighted by the fact of his success. It was 
the having wanted to do so much that was the trap, 
whatever possibilities of glory might accompany the 
good faith with which he fell into it. What accom- 
panies us, as we frequent him, is a sense of the deep- 
ening ache of that good faith with the increase of his 
working consciousness, the merciless development of 
his huge subject and of the rigour of all the conditions. 
We see the whole thing quite as if Destiny had said to 
him: "You want to 'do' France, presumptuous, 
magnificent, miserable man — the France of revolu- 
tions, revivals, restorations, of Bonapartes, Bourbons, 
republics, of war and peace, of blood and romanticism, 
of violent change and intimate continuity, the France 
of the first half of your century? Very well; you most 
distinctly shall, and you shall particularly let me hear, 
even if the great groan of your labour do fill at mo- 
ments the temple of letters, how you like the job." 
We must of course not appear to deny the existence 
of a robust joy in him, the joy of power and creation, 
the joy of the observer and the dreamer who finds a 

xx 



Honore de Balzac 

use for his observations and his dreams as fast as they 
come. The Contcs Drolatiques would by themselves 
sufficiently contradict us, and the savour of the Contcs 
Drolatiques is not confined to these productions. 
His work at large tastes of the same kind of humour, 
and we feel him again and again, like any other great 
healthy producer of these matters, beguiled and car- 
ried along. He would have been, I dare say, the last 
not to insist that the artist has pleasures forever in- 
describable; he lived, in short, in his human comedy 
with the largest life we can attribute to the largest ca- 
pacity. There are particular parts of his subject from 
which, with our sense of his enjoyment of them, we 
have to check the impulse to call him away — frequent- 
ly, as, I confess, in this connection, that impulse arises. 
The connection is with the special element of his 
spectacle from which he never fully detaches him- 
self, the element, to express it succinctly, of the 
" old families " and the great ladies. Balzac frankly 
revelled in his conception of an aristocracy — a con- 
ception that never succeeded in becoming his hap- 
piest; whether, objectively, thanks to the facts sup- 
plied him by the society he studied, or through one of 
the strangest deviations of taste that the literary critic 
is likely to encounter. Nothing would in fact be 
more interesting than to attempt a general measure 
of the part played, in the total comedy, to his imag- 
ination, by the old families; and one or two contri- 
butions to such an attempt I must not fail presently 
to make. I glance at them here, however, the delect- 

xxi 



Honore de Balzac 

able class, but as most representing on the author's 
part free and amused creation; by which, too, I am 
far from hinting that the amusement is at all at their 
expense. It is in their great ladies that the old fami- 
lies most shine out for him, images of strange colour 
and form, but " felt," as we say, to their finger-tips, 
and extraordinarily interesting as a mark of the high 
predominance — predominance of character, of clever- 
ness, of will, of general " personality " — that almost 
every scene of the comedy attributes to women. It 
attributes to them in fact a recognised and uncon- 
tested supremacy; it is through them that the hier- 
archy of old families most expresses itself; and it is 
as surrounded by them, even as some magnificent, in- 
dulgent pasha by his overflowing seraglio, that Balzac 
sits most at his ease. All of which reaffirms — if it be 
needed — that his inspiration, and the sense of it, were 
even greater than his task. And yet such betrayals 
of spontaneity in him make, for an old friend, at the 
end of the chapter, no great difference in respect to 
the pathos — since it amounts to that — of his genius- 
ridden aspect. It comes to us as we go back to him 
that his spirit had fairly made of itself a cage, in which 
he was to turn round and round, always unwinding 
his reel, much in the manner of a criminal condemned 
to hard labour for life. The cage is simply the com- 
plicated but dreadfully definite French world that 
built itself so solidly in and roofed itself so impene- 
trably over him. 

It is not that, caught there with him though we 
xxii 






Honore de Balzac 

be, we ourselves prematurely seek an issue: we throw 
ourselves back, on the contrary, for the particular 
sense of it, into his ancient, superseded, compara- 
tively rococo and quite patriarchal France — patriar- 
chal in spite of social and political convulsions; into 
his old-time, antediluvian Paris, all picturesque and all 
workable, full, to the fancy, of an amenity that has 
passed away; into his intensely differentiated sphere 
of la province, evoked in each sharpest or faintest note 
of its difference, described systematically as narrow 
and flat, and yet attaching us if only by the contagion 
of the author's overflowing sensibility. He feels, in 
his vast comedy, many things, but there is nothing 
he feels with the communicable shocks and vibrations, 
the sustained fury of perception — not always a fierce- 
ness of judgment, which is another matter — that la 
province excites in him. Half our interest in him 
springs still from our own sense that, for all the con- 
vulsions, the revolutions, and experiments that have 
come and gone, the order he describes is the old order 
that our sense of the past perversely recurs to as 
to something happy we have irretrievably missed. 
His pages bristle with the revelation of the linger- 
ing earlier world, the world in which places and 
people still had their queerness, their strong marks, 
their sharp type, and in which, as before the platitude 
that was to come, the observer with an appetite for 
the salient could, by way of precaution, fill his lungs. 
Balzac's appetite for the salient was voracious, yet he 
came, as it were, in time, in spite of his so often speak- 

xxiii 



Honore de Balzac 

ing as if what he sees about him is but the last deso- 
lation of the modern. His conservatism, the most 
entire, consistent, and convinced that ever was — yet 
even at that much inclined to whistling in the dark 
as if to the tune of " Oh, how mediaeval I am! " — 
was doubtless the best point of view from which he 
could rake his field. But if what he sniffed from afar, 
in that position, was the extremity of change, we in 
turn feel both subject and painter drenched with the 
smell of the past. It is preserved in his work as no- 
where else — not vague, nor faint, nor delicate, but 
as strong to-day as when first distilled. 

It may seem odd to find the taste of sadness in 
the fact that a great worker succeeded in clasping his 
opportunity in such an embrace, that being exactly 
our usual measure of the felicity of great workers. I 
speak, I hasten to reassert, all in the name of sym- 
pathy — without which it would have been detestable 
to speak at all; and this sentiment puts its hand in- 
stinctively on the thing that makes it least futile. This 
particular thing then is not in the least Balzac's own 
hold of his terrible mass of matter; it is absolutely 
the convolutions of the serpent he had with a mag- 
nificent courage invited to wind itself round him. We 
must use the common image — he had created his 
Frankenstein monster. It is the fellow-craftsman who 
can most feel for him — it being apparently possible 
to read him from another point of view without get- 
ting really into his presence. We undergo with him 
from book to book, from picture to picture, the con- 

xxiv 



Honore de Balzac 

volutions of the serpent, we especially whose refined 
performances are given, as we know, with but the 
small common or garden snake. I stick to this to 
justify my image, just above, of his having been 
" caged " by the intensity with which he saw his gen- 
eral subject as a whole. To see it always as a whole 
is our wise, our virtuous effort, the very condition, 
as we keep in mind, of superior art. Balzac was in 
this connection then wise and virtuous to the most 
exemplary degree; so that he ought logically, doubt- 
less, but to prompt to complacent reflections. No 
painter ever saw his general subject half so much as 
a whole. Why is it then that we hover about him, 
if we are real Balzacians, not with cheerful chatter, 
but with a consideration deeper in its reach than any 
mere moralizing? The reason is largely that, if you 
wish with absolute immaculate virtue to look at your 
subject as a whole and yet remain a theme for cheer- 
ful chatter, you must be careful to take a subject that 
will not hug you to death. Balzac's active intention 
was, to vary our simile, a beast with a hundred claws, 
and the spectacle is in the hugging process of which, 
as energy against energy, the beast was capable. Its 
victim died of the process at fifty, and if what we see 
in the long gallery in which it is mirrored is not the 
defeat, but the admirable resistance, we none the less 
never lose the sense that the fighter is shut up with 
his fate. He has locked himself in — it is doubtless 
his own fault — and thrown the key away. Most of 
all perhaps the impression comes — the impression of 

XXV 



Honore de Balzac 

the adventurer committed and anxious, but with no 
retreat — from the so formidably concrete nature of 
his material. When we work in the open, as it were, 
our material is not classed and catalogued, so that we 
have at hand a hundred ways of being loose, superfi- 
cial, disingenuous, and yet passing, to our no small 
profit, for remarkable. Balzac had no open; he held 
that the great central, normal, fruitful country of his 
birth and race, overarched with its infinite social com- 
plexity, yielded a sufficiency of earth and sea and sky. 
We seem to see as his catastrophe that the sky, all 
the same, came down on him. He couldn't keep it 
up — in more senses than one. These are perhaps fine 
fancies for a critic to weave about a literary figure of 
whom he has undertaken to give a plain account; but 
I leave them so on the plea that there are relations 
in which, for the Balzacian, criticism simply drops 
out. That is not a liberty, I admit, ever to be much 
encouraged; critics in fact are the only people who 
have a right occasionally to take it. There is no such 
plain account of the Comedie Hiimaine as that it makes 
us fold up our yard-measure and put away our note- 
book quite as we do with some extraordinary charac- 
ter, some mysterious and various stranger who brings 
with him his own standards and his own air. There 
is a kind of eminent presence that abashes even the 
interviewer, moves him to respect and wonder, makes 
him, for consideration itself, not insist. This takes 
of course a personage sole of his kind. But such a 
personage precisely is Balzac. 

xxvi 



Honore de Balzac 



in 

By all of which, none the less, I have felt it but too 
clear that I must not pretend here to take apart the 
pieces of his immense complicated work, to number 
them or group them or dispose them about. The 
most we can do is to pick one up here and there and 
wonder, as we weigh it in our hand, at its close, com- 
pact substance. That is all even M. Taine could do 
in the longest and most penetrating study of which 
our author has been the subject. Every piece we 
handle is so full of stuff, condensed like the edibles 
provided for campaigns and explorations, positively 
so charged, in a word, with life, that we find ourselves 
dropping it, in certain states of sensibility, as we drop 
an object, unguardedly touched, that startles us by 
being animate. We seem really scarce to want any- 
thing to be so animate. It would verily take Balzac 
to detail Balzac, and he has had in fact Balzacians 
nearly enough affiliated to affront the task with cour- 
age. The Repertoire de la Come die Humaine of MM. 
Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Christophe is a closely- 
printed octavo of 550 pages, which constitutes, in 
relation to his characters great and small, an impec- 
cable biographical dictionary. His votaries and ex- 
positors are so numerous that the Balzac library of 
comment and research must be, of its type, one of the 
most copious. M. de Lovenjoul has laboured all; 
round the subject; his Histoire des (Envres alone is 
another crowded octavo of 400 pages; in connection 

xxvii 



Honore de Balzac 

with which I must mention Miss Wormeley, the de- 
voted American translator, interpreter, worshipper, 
who in the course of her own studies has so often 
found occasion to differ from M. de Lovenjoul on 
matters of fact and questions of date and of appre- 
ciation. Miss Wormeley, M. Paul Bourget, and 
many others are examples of the passionate piety that 
our author can inspire. As I turn over the encyclo- 
pedia of his characters I note that whereas such works 
usually commemorate only the ostensibly eminent of 
a race and time, every creature so much as named 
in the fictive swarm is in this case preserved to fame: 
so close is the implication that to have been named by 
such a dispenser of life and privilege is to be, as we 
say it of baronets and peers, created. He infinitely 
divided moreover, as we know, he subdivided, altered, 
and multiplied his heads and categories — his Vie 
Parisienne, his Vie de Province, his Vie Politique, his 
Parents Pauvres, his Etudes Philosophiques, his Splen- 
deurs et Miscres des Courtisanes, his Envers de VHistoire 
Contemporaine, and all the rest; so that nominal refer- 
ence to them becomes the more difficult. Yet with- 
out prejudice either to the energy of conception with 
which he mapped out his theme as with chalk on a 
huge blackboard, or to the prodigious patience with 
which he executed his plan, practically filling in, with 
a wealth of illustration, from sources that to this day 
we fail to make out, every compartment of his table, 
M. de Lovenjoul draws up the list, year by year, from 
1822 to 1848, of his mass of work, giving us thus the 

xxviii 



Honore de Balzac 

measure of the tension represented for him by almost 
any twelve-month. It is wholly unequalled, consider- 
ing the quality of Balzac's production, by any other 
eminent abundance. 

I must be pardoned for coming back to it, for 
seeming unable to leave it; it enshrouds so interesting 
a mystery. How was so solidly systematic a literary 
attack on life to be conjoined with whatever work- 
able minimum of needful intermission, of free obser- 
vation, of personal experience? Some small possi- 
bility of personal experience, of disinterested life, must 
at the worst, from deep within or far without, feed and 
fortify the strained productive machine. These things 
were luxuries that Balzac appears really never to have 
tasted on any appreciable scale. His published let- 
ters — the driest and most starved of those of any 
man of equal distinction — are with the exception of 
those to Mme. de Hanska, whom he married shortly 
before his death, almost exclusively the audible wail 
of a galley-slave chained to the oar. M. Zola, in our 
time, among the novelists, has sacrificed to intensity 
of production in something of the same manner, yet 
with goodly modern differences that leave him a com- 
paratively simple instance. His work, assuredly, has 
been more nearly dried up by the sacrifice than ever 
Balzac's was — so miraculously, given the conditions, 
was Balzac's to escape the anticlimax. Method and 
system, in the chronicle of the race of Rougon-Mac- 
quart, an economy in itself certainly of the rarest and 
most interesting, have spread so from centre to cir- 

xxix 



Honore de Balzac 

cumference that they have ended by being almost the 
only thing we feel. And then M. Zola has survived 
and triumphed in his lifetime, has continued and 
lasted, has piled up, and, if the remark be not frivo- 
lous, enjoyed in all its agrements the reward for which 
Balzac toiled and sweated in vain. On top of which 
he will have had also his literary great-grandfather's 
heroic example to start from and profit by, the posi- 
tive heritage of a His de famille to enjoy, spend, save, 
waste. Balzac, frankly, had no heritage at all but his 
stiff subject, and, by way of model, not even, in any 
direct or immediate manner, that of the inner light 
and kindly admonition of his genius. Nothing adds 
more to the strangeness of his general performance 
than his having failed so long to find his inner light, 
groped for it for nearly ten years, missed it again and 
again, moved straight away from it, turned his back 
on it, lived, in fine, round about it, in a darkness still 
scarce penetrable, a darkness into which we peep only 
half to make out the dreary little waste of his numer- 
ous ceuvres de jeunesse. To M. Zola was vouchsafed 
the good fortune of settling down to the Rougon- 
Macquart with the happiest promptitude; it was as if 
time for one look about him — and I say it without dis- 
paragement to the reach of his look — had sufficiently 
served his purpose. Balzac, moreover, might have 
written five hundred novels without our feeling in 
him the faintest hint of the breath of doom, if he had 
only been comfortably capable of conceiving the short 
cut of the fashion practised by others under his eyes. 

XXX 



■ 



Honore de Balzac 

As Alexandre Dumas and Mme. George Sand, illus- 
trious contemporaries, cultivated a personal life and 
a disinterested consciousness by the bushel, having, 
for their easier duration, not too consistently known, 
as the true painter knows it, the obsession of the thing 
to be done, so Balzac was condemned by his con- 
stitution itself, by his inveterately seeing this " thing 
to be done " as part and parcel, as of the very essence, 
of his subject. The latter existed for him, as the pro- 
cess worked and hallucination set in, in the form, and 
the form only, of the thing done, and not in any 
hocus-pocus about doing. There was no kindly con- 
venient escape for him by the little swinging back- 
door of the thing not done. He desired — no man 
more — to get out of his obsession, but only at the 
other end, that is by boring through it. " How then, 
thus deprived of the outer air almost as much as if 
he were gouging a passage for a railway through an 
Alp, did he live? " is the question that haunts us — 
with the consequence, for the most part, of promptly 
meeting its answer. He did not live — save in his im- 
agination, or by other aid than he could find there; his 
imagination was, in fine, his experience — he had prov- 
ably no time for the real thing. This brings us to the 
rich if simple truth that his imagination alone did 
the business, carried through both the conception and 
the execution — as large an effort and as proportionate 
a success, in all but the vulgar sense, as the faculty, 
equally handicapped, was ever concerned in. Handi- 
capped I say because this interesting fact about him, 

xxxi 



Honore de Balzac 

with the claim it makes, rests on the ground, the high 
distinction, that, more than all the rest of us put to- 
gether, he went in, as we say, for detail, circumstance, 
and specification, proposed to himself all the connec- 
tions of every part of his matter and the full total of 
the parts. The whole thing, it is impossible not to 
keep repeating, was what he deemed treatable. One 
really knows, in all imaginative literature, no enter- 
prise to compare with it for courage, good faith, and 
sublimity. There, once more, was the necessity that 
rode him and that places him apart in our homage. 
It is no light thing to have been condemned to be- 
come provably sublime. And looking through, or 
trying to, at what is beneath, behind, we are left be- 
nevolently uncertain if the predominant quantity be 
audacity or innocence. 

It is of course inevitable at this point to seem to 
hear the colder critic promptly take us up. He un- 
dertook the whole thing — oh, exactly — the ponderous 
person! But did he " do " the whole thing, if you 
please, any more than sundry others of fewer preten- 
sions? The answer to this is one that it is a positive joy 
to give, so sharp a note instantly sounds as an effect of 
the inquiry. Nothing is more interesting and amusing 
than to find one's self recognising both that Balzac's 
pretensions were immense, portentous, and that yet, 
taking him — and taking them — altogether, they only 
minister, in the long run, to our fondness. They affect 
us not only as the endearing eccentricities of a person 
we greatly admire, but fairly as the very condition of 

xxxii 



Honore de Balzac 

his having become such a person. We take them 
thus in the first place for the very terms of his plan, 
and in the second for a part of that high robustness 
and that general richness of nature which made him, 
in the face of such a plan, believe in himself. One 
would really scarce have liked to see such a job as 
La Comedie Humaine tackled without swagger. To 
think of the thing really as practicable was swagger, 
and of the very highest order. So to think assuredly 
implied pretensions, pretensions that risked showing 
as monstrous should the enterprise fail to succeed. 
It is for the colder critic to take the trouble to make 
out that of the two parties to it the body of pretension 
remains greater than the success. One may put it, 
moreover, at the worst for him, recognise that it is in 
the matter of opinion still more than in the matter of 
knowledge that Balzac offers himself as universally 
competent. He has flights of judgment — on subjects 
the most special as well as the most general — that are 
vertiginous, and on his alighting from which we greet 
him with a peculiar indulgence. We can easily im- 
agine him to respond, confessing humorously — if he 
had only time — to such a benevolent, understanding 
smile as would fain hold our own eyes a moment. 
Then it is that he would most show us his scheme and 
his necessities, and how, in operation, they all hang 
together. Naturally everything about everything, 
though how he had time to learn it is the last thing 
he has time to tell us; which matters the less, more- 
over, as it is not over the question of his knowledge 

xxxiii 



Honore de Balzac 

that we sociably invite him, as it were (and remem- 
bering the two augurs behind the altar), to wink at us. 
His convictions it is that are his great, pardonable 
" swagger "; to them in particular I refer as his gen- 
eral operative condition, the constituted terms of his 
experiment, and, not less, as his consolation, his sup- 
port, his amusement by the way. They embrace 
everything in the world — that is in his world of the 
high-coloured France of his time: religion, morals, 
politics, economics, physics, aesthetics, letters, art, 
science, sociology, every question of faith, every 
branch of research. They represent thus his equip- 
ment of ideas, those ideas of which it will never do 
for a man who aspires to constitute a state to be de- 
prived. He must take them with him as an ambassa- 
dor extraordinary takes with him secretaries, uni- 
forms, stars and garters, a gilded coach and a high 
assurance. Balzac's opinions are his gilded coach, in 
which he is more amused than anything else to feel 
himself riding, but which is indispensably concerned 
in getting him over the ground. What more inevi- 
table than that they should be intensely Catholic, in- 
tensely monarchical, intensely saturated with the real 
genius — as between 1830 and 1848 he believed it to 
be — of the French character and French institutions? 
Nothing is happier for us than that he should have 
enjoyed his outlook before the first half of the cen- 
tury closed. He could then still treat his subject as 
comparatively homogeneous. Any country could 
have a Revolution — every country had had one. A 

xxxiv 



Honore de Balzac 

Restoration was merely what a revolution involved, 
and the Empire had been, with the French, but a 
revolutionary incident, in addition to being, by good 
luck, for the novelist, an immensely pictorial one. He 
was free, therefore, to arrange the background of the 
comedy in the manner that seemed to him best to suit 
anything so great; in the manner, at the same time, 
prescribed, according to his contention, by the no- 
blest traditions. The church, the throne, the noblesse, 
the bourgeoisie, the people, the peasantry, all in their 
order, and each solidly kept in it, these were precious 
things, things his superabundant insistence on the 
price of which is what I refer to as his exuberance 
of opinion. It was a luxury for more reasons than 
one, though one, presently to be mentioned, hand- 
somely predominates. The meaning of that exchange 
of intelligences in the rear of the oracle which I have 
figured for him with the perceptive friend bears simply 
on his pleading guilty to the purport of the friend's 
discrimination. The point the latter makes with him 
— a beautiful, cordial, critical point — is that he truly 
cares for nothing in the world, thank goodness, so 
much as for the passions and embroilments of men 
and women, the free play of character and the sharp 
revelation of type, all the real stuff of the drama and 
the native food of the novelist. Religion, morals, poli- 
tics, economics, aesthetics, would be thus, as system- 
atic matter, very well in their place, but quite second- 
ary and subservient. Balzac's attitude is again and 
again that he cares for the adventures and emotions 

c XXXV 



Honore de Balzac 

because, as his last word, he cares for the good and 
the greatness of the state — which is where his swag- 
ger, with a whole society on his hands, comes in. 
What we on our side in a thousand places gratefully 
feel is that he cares for his monarchical and hierarchi- 
cal and ecclesiastical society because it rounds itself, 
for his mind, into the most congruous and capacious 
theatre for the repertory of his innumerable come- 
dians. It has, above all, for a painter abhorrent of the 
superficial, the inestimable benefit of the accumulated, 
of strong marks and fine shades, contrasts and com- 
plications. There had certainly been since 1789 dis- 
persals and confusions enough, but the thick tradi- 
tion, no more, at the most, than half smothered, lay 
under them all. So the whole of his faith and no small 
part of his working omniscience were neither more 
nor less than that historic sense which I have spoken 
of as the spur of his invention and which he possessed 
as no other novelist has done. We immediately feel 
that to name it in connection with him is to answer 
every question he suggests and to account for each of 
his idiosyncrasies in turn. The novel, the tale, how- 
ever brief, the passage, the sentence by itself, the sit- 
uation, the person, the place, the motive exposed, the 
speech reported — these things were, in his view, his- 
tory, with the absoluteness and the dignity of history. 
This is the source both of his weight and of his wealth. 
What is the historic sense after all but animated, but 
impassioned knowledge seeking to enlarge itself? I 
have said that his imagination did the whole thing, 

xxxvi 



Honore de Balzac 

no other explanation — no reckoning of the possibili- 
ties of personal saturation — meeting the mysteries of 
the case. Therefore his imagination achieved the 
miracle of absolutely resolving itself into multifarious 
knowledge. Since history proceeds by documents, he 
constructed, as he needed them, the documents too — 
fictive sources that imitated the actual to the life. It 
was of course a terrible business, but at least, in the 
light of it, his pretensions to infinitude are justified — 
which is what was to be shown. 



IV 

It is very well, even in the sketchiest attempt at 
a portrait of his genius, to try to take particulars in 
their order: one peeps over the shoulder of another 
at the moment we get a feature into focus. The loud 
appeal not to be left out prevails among them all, and 
certainly with the excuse that each, as we fix it, seems 
to fall most into the picture. I have indulged myself 
so as to his general air that I find a whole list of vivid 
contributive marks almost left on my hands. Such a 
list, in any study of Balzac, is delightful for intimate 
edification as well as for the fine humour of the thing; 
we proceed from one of the items of his breathing 
physiognomy to the other with quite the same sense 
of life, the same active curiosity, with which we push 
our way through the thick undergrowth of one of the 
novels. The difficulty is really that the special point 
for which one at the moment observes him melts into 

xxxvii 



Honore de Balzac 

all the other points, is swallowed up before one's eyes 
in the formidable mass. The French apply the best of 
terms to certain characters when they .speak of them 
as entiers, and if the word had been invented for Balzac 
it could scarce better have expressed him. He is " en- 
tire " as was never a man of his craft; he moves always 
in his mass; wherever we find him we find him in force; 
whatever touch he applies he applies it with his whole 
apparatus. He is like an army gathered to besiege a 
cottage equally with a city, and living voraciously, in 
either case, on all the country about. It may well be, 
at any rate, that his infatuation with the idea of the 
social, the practical primacy of " the sex " is the ar- 
ticle at the top of one's list; there could certainly be 
no better occasion than this of a rich reissue of the 
Deux Jeunes Mariees for placing it there at a venture. 
Here indeed, precisely, we get a sharp example of the 
way in which, as I have just said, a capital illustration 
of one of his sides becomes, just as we take it up, a 
capital illustration of another. The correspondence 
of Louise de Chaulieu and Renee de Maucombe is in 
fact one of those cases that light up with a great 
golden glow all his parts at once. We needn't mean 
by this that such parts are themselves absolutely all 
golden — given the amount of tinsel, for instance, in 
his view, supereminent, transcendent here, of the old 
families and the great ladies. What we do convey, 
however, is that his creative temperament finds in such 
data as these one of its best occasions for shining out. 
Again we fondly recognise his splendid, his attaching 

xxxviii 



Honore de Balzac 

swagger — that of a " bounder " of genius and of feel- 
ing; again we see how, with opportunity, its elements 
may vibrate into a perfect ecstasy of creation. 

Why shouldn't a man swagger, he treats us to the 
diversion of asking ourselves, who has created, from 
top to toe, the most brilliant, the most historic, the 
most insolent, above all the most detailed and dis- 
criminated of aristocracies? Balzac carried the up- 
permost class of his comedy, from the princes, dukes, 
and unspeakable duchesses down to his poor barons 
de province, about in his pocket as he might have car- 
ried a tolerably beflngered pack of cards, to deal them 
about with a flourish of the highest authority when- 
ever there was a chance of a game. He knew them 
up and down and in and out, their arms, infallibly sup- 
plied, their quarterings, pedigrees, services, intermar- 
riages, relationships, ramifications, and other delect- 
able attributes. This indeed is comparatively simple 
learning; the real wonder is rather when we linger on 
the ground of the patrician consciousness itself, the 
innermost, the esoteric, the spirit, temper, tone — tone 
above all — of the titled and the proud. The questions 
multiply for every scene of the comedy; there is no 
one who makes us walk in such a cloud of them. The 
clouds elsewhere, in comparison, are at best of ques- 
tions not worth asking. Was the patrician conscious- 
ness that figured as our author's model so splendidly 
fatuous as he — almost without irony, often in fact 
with a certain poetic sympathy — everywhere repre- 
sents it? His imagination lives in it, breathes its 

xxxix 



Honore de Balzac 

scented air, swallows this element with the smack of 
the lips of the connoisseur; but I feel that we never 
know, even to the end, whether he be here directly- 
historic or only, quite misguidedly, romantic. The 
romantic side of him has the extent of all the others; 
it represents, in the oddest manner, his escape from 
the walled and roofed structure into which he had 
built himself — his longing for the vaguely-felt out- 
side, for the rest, so to speak, of the globe. But it is 
characteristic of him that the most he could do for this 
relief was to bring the fantastic into the circle and fit 
it somehow to his conditions. Was the tone of his 
duchesses and marquises but the imported fantastic, 
one of those smashes of the window-pane of the real 
that reactions sometimes produce even in the stub- 
born? or are we to take it as observed, as really re- 
ported, as, for all its difference from our notion of the 
natural — and, quite as much, of the artificial — in 
another and happier strain of manners, substantially 
true? The whole episode, in Les Illusions Per dues, of 
Mme. de Bargeton's " chucking " Lucien de Rubem- 
pre, on reaching Paris with him, under pressure of 
Mme. d'Espard's shockability as to his coat and trou- 
sers, and other such matters, is either a magnificent 
lurid document or the baseless fabric of a vision. The 
great wonder is that, as I rejoice to put it, we can 
never really discover which, and that we feel, as we 
read, that we can't, and that we suffer at the hands 
of no other author this particular helplessness of im- 
mersion. It is done — we are always thrown back on 

xl 



Honore de Balzac 

that; we can't get out of it; all we can do is to say that 
the true itself can't be more than done, and that if 
the false in this way equals it we must give up looking 
for the difference. Alone among novelists Balzac has 
the secret of an insistence that somehow makes the 
difference nought. He warms his facts into life — as 
witness the certainty that the episode I just cited has 
absolutely as much of that property as if perfect 
matching had been achieved. If the great ladies in 
question didn't behave, wouldn't, couldn't have be- 
haved, like a pair of frightened snobs, why, so much 
the worse, we say to ourselves, for the great ladies in 
question. We know them so — they owe their being to 
our so seeing them; whereas we never can tell our- 
selves how we should otherwise have known them or 
what quantity of being they would, on a different 
footing, have been able to show us. 

The case is the same with Louise de Chaulieu, 
who, besides coming out of her convent school, as a 
quite young thing, with an amount of sophistication 
that would have chilled the heart of a horse-dealer, 
exhales — and to her familiar friend, a young person of 
a supposedly equal breeding — an extravagance of 
complacency in her " social position " that makes us 
rub our eyes. Whereupon, after a little, the same 
phenomenon occurs; we swallow her bragging, 
against our better reason, or at any rate our startled 
sense, under coercion of the total intensity. We do 
more than this, we cease to care for the question, 
which loses itself in the Hot fusion of the whole pic- 

xli 



Honore de Balzac 

ture. He has " gone for " his subject, in the vulgar 
phrase, with an avidity that makes the attack of his 
most eminent rivals affect us as the intercourse be- 
tween introduced indifferences at a dull evening 
party. He squeezes it till it cries out, we hardly know 
whether for pleasure or pain. In the case before us, 
for example — without wandering from book to book, 
impossible here, I make the most of the ground al- 
ready broken — he has seen at once that the state of 
marriage itself, sounded to its depths, is, in the con- 
nection, his real theme. He sees it of course in the 
conditions that exist for him, but he weighs it to the 
last ounce, feels it in all its dimensions, as well as in 
all his own, and would scorn to take refuge in any en- 
gaging side-issue. He gets, for further intensity, into 
the very skin of his jeunes mariees — into each alter- 
nately, as they are different enough; so that, to repeat 
again, any other mode of representing women, or of 
representing anybody, becomes, in juxtaposition, a 
thing so void of the active contortions of truth as to 
be comparatively wooden. He bears children with 
Mme. de l'Estorade, knows intimately how she suf- 
fers for them, and not less intimately how her corre- 
spondent suffers, as well as enjoys, without them. Big 
as he is he makes himself small to be handled by her 
with young maternal passion and positively to handle 
her in turn with infantile innocence. These things are 
the very flourishes, the little technical amusements of 
his penetrating power. But it is doubtless in his hand 
for such a matter as the jealous passion of Louise de 

xlii 



Honore de Balzac 

Chaulieu, the free play of her intelligence, and the al- 
most beautiful good faith of her egotism, that he is 
most individual. It is one of the neatest examples 
of his extraordinary leading gift, his art — which is 
really, moreover, not an art — of working the exhibi- 
tion of a given character up to intensity. I say it is 
not an art because it acts for us rather as a hunger on 
the part of his nature to take on, in all freedom, an- 
other nature — take it by a direct process of the senses. 
Art is for the mass of us who have only the process 
of art, comparatively so stiff. The thing amounts 
with him to a kind of shameless personal, physical, 
not merely intellectual, duality — the very spirit and 
secret of transmigration. 

Henry James. 



xliii 



LIFE OF BALZAC 



Honore de Balzac was the eldest of the four chil- 
dren of an officer in the commissariat, settled in that 
service at Tours. Here, at No. 39 Rue Royale, the future 
novelist was bom on the 16th of May, 1799. He was dull 
and dreamy as a child, sometimes so absorbed as to seem 
positively comatose. At school at Vendome, and after- 
ward in Tours, he seemed to make little intellectual prog- 
ress. In 1814 the family moved to Paris, and from 18 16 to 
1819 Honore studied the law. By his twentieth year, how- 
ever, the vocation of letters had appealed to him so strong- 
ly, and he seemed to have so little aptitude for any other 
business, that his parents consented to leave him alone in 
Paris {for the family now retired to Villeparisis), in an 
attic near the Arsenal Library, where he devoted himself 
entirely to preparation for the literary life. Between 1822 
and 1826 Balzac produced a great number of stories, 
extravagant and dull, under such pseudonyms as "Lord 
R'Hoone" " Villergle," " Horace de St. Aubain," and 
" M. D." These valueless romances he sold for very 
small sums to eke out the slender allowance which he 
received from his father. Balzac was aware of the 
worthlessness of these productions, and he set himself y 

xlv 



Life of Balzac 

with heroic resolution, to begin his labours over again. 
His genuine works, therefore, start with the four vol- 
umes of " Le Dernier Chouan" {afterward " Les Chou- 
ans"), published in 1829, the earliest book to which Bal- 
zac attached his name. This magnificent romance at- 
tracted some notice, and the author was encouraged to 
bring out his pseudo-metaphysical essay, the "Physiolo- 
gic du Manage/' and the collection of short stories, 
" Scenes de la Vie Privee," both in 1830. The next year 
saw the issue of " La Peau de Chagrin " and " La Mai- 
son du Chat-qui-Pelote," which enjoyed a decided success, 
and from this time forth, for nearly twenty years, Balzac 
was engaged, almost without intermission, in the furious 
composition of stories. It is impossible to name here a 
tenth part of so fertile an author's most important 
works; to deal with the bibliography of Balzac is to 
try to count the stars upon a frosty night. But it may 
be recorded that the " Contes Drolatiques " began to be 
issued in 1832; that the "Etudes de Moeurs" (which 
included "Eugenie Grandet," "Les Illusions Perdues," 
and " Le Colonel Chabert") appeared between 1834 m & 
183/; and the more fantastic " Etudes Philosophiques " — 
among which are "Louis Lambert," " Seraphita," and 
" Une Passion dans le Desert " — date from 1835 to 1840. 
But before the latter date, Balzac had settled down to more 
detailed studies of contemporary life, beginning in 1835 
with " Le Pere Goriot." 'Among the splendid novels which 
followed we can not omit lo mention " Le Lys dans la 
Vallee" (1836), "Cesar Birotteau" (1838), " Me- 
moir es de Deux Jeunes Marices" (1842), " Modeste 

xlvi 



Life of Balzac 

Mignon" {1844), "La Cousine Bette" (1846), and " Le 
Cousin Pons " (184/').. It was in 1842 that Balzac's books 
were first collected, in seventeen volumes, as " La Come- 
die Humaine," although for many years the idea had 
occurred to him of bringing them together under a com- 
mon heading. The greater part of the extremely labori- 
ous life of Balzac was spent in Paris, and finally in a 
pavilion of the Hotel Beaujon, where he arranged 
around his writing-table a rich collection of paintings 
and bric-a-brac. His brief periods of repose were spent 
with his friends, and there were in particular certain 
women whose names will be always honoured in con- 
nection with his. During his early struggles he re- 
ceived the most charming kindness from Madame de 
Berny; for many years Madame Zulma Carraud zvas 
his sympathetic confidante; and from 1833 to the close 
, of his life he found absolute happiness in his friendship 
with Madame de Hanska. 'Although the latter became 
a widow in 1843, difficulties stood in the way of her mar- 
riage with Balzac, until March, 1850, when they were 
united in Warsaw under very fortunate conditions. Un- 
luckily, Balzac had worked too strenuously and had 
postponed happiness too long. As early as May it was 
seen that his health was failing, and the couple hurried 
to Paris for advice. Nothing, however, could stem the 
progress of heart-disease, and on the night of the 18th 
of August, 1850, Balzac died; his widow survived him 
until 1882. 

E. G. 



xlvii 



TO 

GEORGE SAND 

This Dedication, my dear George, can add nothing 
to the glory of your name, which will cast its magic ray 
over my book. Yet it argues neither calculation nor mod- 
esty on my part. My desire is thereby to attest the true 
friendship which has endured between us two, through all 
our travels and our partings, in spite of our labours, in 
spite of the ill-nature of the world about us. This feeling 
will never weaken, I am sure. The procession of affec- 
tionately remembered names which will accompany my 
works mingles a pleasure with the pain their number has 
cost me — for they all cost me suffering, if it were only 
the vituperation my alarming prolificness calls down upon 
me — as though the world I picture were not even more 
fecund yet ! Will it not be a grand thing, George, if the 
future antiquary, delving, some fine day, among dead 
literatures, discovers in this array none but great names, 
high hearts, friendships holy and pure, and all the most 
glorious reputations of this country ? May I not claim 
greater pride in this assured good fortune than in suc- 
cesses which are always subject to dispute? To any one 
who knows you well, is it not a happiness to be able to 
call himself, as I do here, 

Your friend, 

DE BALZAC. 
Paris, June, 1840. 



xlix 



CONTENTS 



PAGES 

Honore de Balzac v-xliii 

Henry James 

Life of Balzac xlv-xlvii 

Edmund Gosse 

Dedication xlix 

The Memoirs of Two Young Brides . i— 354 

Curious unpublished or unknown Por- 
traits of Honore de Balzac . . . 355-368 

Octave Uzanne 




li 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Honore de Balzac Frontispiece 

Facsimiles , in colours, of paintings by Paul Avril 

I saw my Abencerrage coming towards me . 127 
He climbed my wall in the dark to kiss the 
hand I held out to him from my bal- 
cony 167 

I saw her go into the Tuileries with two chil- 
dren 339 

Portraits in the text 

PAGE 

Honore de Balzac as a young man, 1836, 

from the drawing by Louis Boulanger . 357 

Lithograph by Emile Lassalle, 1841 . . . 358 

Medallion, after a lithograph, 1842 . . . 359 

Unsigned caricature, published in 1835 • • 3 6° 

After a portrait by Louis Boulanger, 1840 . 361 

After a portrait, drawn from life, 1842 . . . 361 
After an unpublished sketch made by David 

d'Angers in 1845 3^ 2 

liii 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 



In 1844 

After a daguerreotype taken in 1 848 . 
After an anonymous engraving, 1836 . 
After a sketch by Eugene Giraud . 
The rejected statue by Auguste Rodin 
Sketch by Gavarni . 



362 

363 
364 
365 
3 66 
368 




liv 



THE MEMOIRS 
OF TWO YOUNG BRIDES 



THE MEMOIRS 
OF TWO YOUNG BRIDES 



PART FIRST 



LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE 

Well, my dear! I, too, have reached the outer 
world, and if you haven't written to me from Blois, I 
am the first to keep our delightful epistolary rendez- 
vous. Now lift up the beautiful black eyes you have 
fixed on this first sentence of mine, and keep your 
exclamations for the letter which shall tell you of my 
first love! People always talk about a first love; is 
there a second, then? "Hush!" you'll say. " Tell 
me rather," you'll add, " how you escaped from the 
convent in which you were to have taken your 
vows? " My dear, the miracle of my deliverance, 
though it did happen in the Carmelite convent, was 
the most natural thing in the world. The clamour 
of a terrified conscience finally prevailed over the fiat 
of an unwavering policy, and there's an end. My 
aunt, who did not choose to see me die of a consump- 
tion, got the better of my mother, who had always 
prescribed the novitiate as the one and only cure for 

3 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

my malady. The state of deep melancholy into which 
I fell when you departed hastened this happy solution. 
And I am in Paris, my dearest, and I am in all the 
delight of being there! My Renee, if you could have 
seen me, that day, when I found myself all alone, you 
would have been proud of having inspired so deep a 
feeling in so young a heart! We have dreamt so 
many dreams in company, we have spread our wings 
so often, and lived so much together, that I believe 
our souls are welded one to the other just like those 
two Hungarian girls, whose death-story was told us 
by M. Beauvisage, who certainly wasn't like his name 
— never was convent doctor better chosen! Were 
you not ill, too, when your darling fell sick? In 
my state of gloomy depression, I could only recog- 
nise, each in its turn, the bonds that make us one. 
I fancied separation had broken them. I loathed ex- 
istence like some widowed turtle-dove. The thought 
of death was sweet to me, and I really was dying softly 
away. To be left alone at the Carmelite convent at 
Blois, tortured by the fear of having to take the veil, 
without Mile, de la Valliere's previous experience, 
and without my Renee, that was illness, indeed — a 
mortal sickness! The monotonous round in which 
each hour brings a duty, a labour, or a prayer, all so 
precisely alike that at any hour of the day or night 
any one may know exactly what a Carmelite nun must 
be doing — that hateful life, in which it matters not 
whether the things about us exist or not — had grown 
full of variety to us. The flight of our imagination 

4 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

knew no limit. On us fancy had bestowed the key 
of all her realms. Each of us in turn was the other's 
winged steed'. The liveliest stirred the dullest pulses 
of the other, and our fancy frolicked at will, in undis- 
turbed possession of that outer world which was for- 
bidden us. 

Even the lives of the saints helped us to under- 
stand the things most carefully hidden from us. The 
day which robbed me of your sweet company saw me 
become that which we know a Carmelite to be — a 
modern Danaid, whose task does not, indeed, consist 
in filling a bottomless cask, but who daily draws, out 
of some hidden well, an empty bucket on the unceas- 
ing rope that she may find it full. My aunt knew of 
our inner life. To her, who had made herself a heaven 
of happiness within the two acres encircled by her con- 
vent walls, my loathing of existence was inexplicable. 
The girl who, at our age, embraces the religious life, 
must either possess an excessive simplicity (which we, 
my dear creature, cannot claim) or else that passion 
of devotion which makes my aunt so noble a figure. 
My aunt sacrificed herself to a brother whom she 
adored; but what girl can sacrifice herself to people 
she doesn't even know, or to an idea? 

For almost a fortnight, now, I have been keeping 
back so many hasty remarks, and burying so many 
meditations deep in my heart, I have so many things 
to say, so many stories to tell, which I can confide to 
none but you, that but for this makeshift plan of writ- 
ing you my confidences, and thus replacing our be- 

5 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

loved talks, I really should choke! How indispen- 
sable is the life of the affections. This morning I be- 
gin this journal of mine, fancying that yours, too, is 
begun, and that in a few days I shall live in the depths 
of your beautiful valley at Gemenos, of which I know 
only what you have told me, just as you will live in 
Paris, of which you know nothing but what we used 
to dream together. 

Well, my sweet child, on a morning which will 
always be written in rose-colour in the book of my 
life, a demoiselle de compagnie and my grandmother's 
last man-servant, Philippe, arrived from Paris to es- 
cort me back. When my aunt sent for me to her 
room and told me this piece of news, my joy quite 
struck me dumb and I stared stupidly at her. 

" My child," said she in her guttural voice, " it 
is no grief to you to leave me, I can see that. But 
this farewell is not our last. We shall meet again. 
God has set the mark of the elect upon your forehead. 
You have the pride which either leads a woman up 
to heaven or down to hell. But you have too much 
nobility in you to sink. I know you better than you 
know yourself. Passion, in your case, will not be 
what it is to the common run of women." 

She drew me gently towards her, and kissed me 
on the forehead, so that I could feel the fire that con- 
sumes her — that has blackened the azure of her eyes 
and weighted her eye-lids, lined her smooth temples, 
and sallowed her beautiful face. It made my flesh 
creep. Before I answered her, I kissed her hands. 

6 




The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Then I said: " Dear aunt, since your adorable good- 
ness has not made your Paraclete seem either healthy 
to my body or dear to my heart, I must shed so many 
tears before I came back, that you could hardly wish 
for my return. I never will come back, unless my 
Louis XIV betrays me. And if I once lay my hand 
on one, nothing but Death shall take him from me. 
No Montespan shall frighten me! " 

" Hush, giddy child," she said, with a smile. 
" You must not leave those vain thoughts here be- 
hind you. Take them away with you, and know that 
there is more of the Montespan than of the La Val- 
liere in your composition." 

I kissed her. The poor soul could not resist com- 
ing with me to the carriage, and her eyes wandered 
backward and forward between the family coat of 
arms and me. 

At Beaugency night overtook me, still lost in the 
moral stupor caused by this strange farewell. What 
is my destiny in this outer world for which I have so 
greatly longed? In the first place, I found nobody 
to meet me. The demonstrations of affection I had 
prepared were all wasted. My mother was at the 
Bois de Boulogne, my father was at the Council- 
board. My brother, the Due de Rhetore, never 
comes in, I am told, except to dress before dinner. 
Miss Griffiths (she has claws) and Philippe showed 
me to my rooms. 

These rooms belonged to that beloved grand- 
mother, the Princess de Vauremont, to whom I owe a 

7 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

fortune of some kind, which nobody has mentioned to 
me. As you read these words, you will share the sad- 
ness that overwhelmed me when I entered the apart- 
ments hallowed to me by so many memories. They 
remained just as she had left them. I was to sleep 
in the very bed in which she died. I sat down 
on the edge of her sofa, and burst into tears, quite 
forgetting that I was not alone. How often, I 
thought, I had knelt here beside her — so as to catch 
her words more easily — and from this couch had 
watched her face, half hidden amid yellowish laces, 
and worn as much by age as by the sufferings of ap- 
proaching death! The room still seemed full of the 
warmth she had always kept up in it. How comes it, 
thought I, that Mile. Armande Louise Marie de 
Chaulieu is obliged, like any peasant, to sleep in her 
grandmother's bed almost on the day of her death? 
For to me it seemed that the Princess, who had really 
passed away in 1817, had died only on the previous 
night. There were things in this room which should 
not have been there, and which proved how careless 
people taken up with the affairs of the kingdom are 
apt to be about their own, and how little thought was 
given, once she was dead, to the noble-hearted woman 
who will always remain one of the great feminine fig- 
ures of the eighteenth century. Philippe had an ink- 
ling of the cause of my tears. He told me the Princess 
had left me all her furniture, and also that my father 
had left the great reception rooms in the condition 
into which they had fallen during the Revolution. 

8 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Then I rose to my feet, Philippe opened the door of 
the small drawing-room leading into the saloons, and 
I found them in the state of complete ruin I recol- 
lected. Above the doors the empty panels, once 
filled by valuable pictures, still gape; the marble fig- 
ures are all smashed, the looking-glasses have been 
carried off. In the old days I used to dread going 
up the great stair-case and crossing the huge lonely, 
lofty rooms, and I used to pass to the Princess's 
apartment by a small stair-case which runs under the 
hollow of the great one, and leads to the wainscot 
door of her dressing-room. 

The apartment, consisting of a sitting-room, a 
bed-room, and that pretty vermilion and gold dress- 
ing-room of which I have often spoken to you, is in 
the wing that lies towards the Invalides. The house is 
only separated from the boulevard by a creeper-cov- 
ered wall, and by a splendid double row of trees, whose 
foliage mingles with that of the elms on the side of the 
boulevard. But for the gold and blue dome and the 
gray outlines of the Invalides one might fancy one's 
self in a forest. The style of these three rooms and 
their position marks them as having formed the old 
state apartments of the Duchess of Chaulieu. Those of 
the Duke must have been in the opposite wing. The 
two are decently parted by the principal building and 
by the front wing, which contains those great dark, re- 
sounding rooms, which, as Philippe had shown me, 
are still stripped of their splendour, and just as I used 
to see them in my childish days. When Philippe per- 

9 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ceived the astonishment depicted on my countenance 
he took on a confidential air. " In this diplomatic 
household, my dear, every servant is mysterious and 
discreet." He informed me that the passing of a law 
which was to restore the value of their property to 
the emigre families was shortly expected. My father 
is putting off the decoration of his house till that 
restitution is made. The King's architect has cal- 
culated the expense at three hundred thousand francs. 
The result of this confidence was to send me back 
to my sofa in the drawing-room. What! Then my 
father, instead of using this sum of money for my 
dowry, would have let me* die in a convent? This 
was the thought that struck me on the threshold of 
that door. Ah, Renee! how I did lean my head 
against your shoulder, and how my mind went back 
to the days when my grandmother's presence filled 
these two rooms with life! She, who lives nowhere 
now, save in my heart, and you, who are at Mau- 
combe, two hundred leagues away from me, are the 
only two human beings who love, or ever have loved 
me! That dear old lady with the young eyes de- 
lighted to be roused in the mornings by my voice. 
How we understood each other! The memory of her 
brought a sudden change in the feelings I had first 
experienced. That which had seemed a profanation 
now appeared to me something almost holy! It was 
sweet to me, now, to breathe the vague odour of 
Pondre a la Marechale that hung about the room. It 
would be sweet to sleep under the protecting yellow 

10 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

satin curtains with their white pattern, in which her 
eyes and her breath must surely have left something 
of herself. I told Philippe to restore their bright pol- 
ish to the bits of old furniture and to impart a look 
of habitation to my rooms. I showed him myself 
how I wished things to be arranged, pointing out 
where each piece of furniture should stand. I looked 
over everything, and took formal possession, explain- 
ing how he was to freshen up the antique things which 
are so dear to me. The decoration of the room is all 
white, somewhat dimmed by time, and the gilding of 
the fanciful arabesques shows a touch of red here and 
there. But this is all in harmony with the faded tints 
of the Savonnerie carpet, given to my grandmother, 
with his own portrait, by Louis XV. The clock was 
a present from the Marechal de Saxe, the china on 
the chimney-piece a gift from the Marechal de Riche- 
lieu. My grandmother's picture, painted when she 
was five-and-twenty, hangs in an oval frame facing 
the King's portrait. There is no picture of the 
Prince. I like this frank omission, which, in a flash, 
without a touch of hypocrisy in it, depicts her fas- 
cinating personality. Once, when my aunt was very 
ill, her confessor pressed her to allow the Prince, who 
was waiting in the drawing-room, to enter the sick- 
room. 

" With the doctor and his prescriptions," said my 
grandmother. 

Over the bed there is a canopy, the bed-head is 
padded, and the curtains looped up in fine ample 

ii 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

folds. The furniture is of gilt wood, covered with 
the same yellow damask, patterned with white flow- 
ers, of which the window hangings are made, and 
which is lined with a white silken material something 
like moire. I do not know who painted the panels 
over the doors, but they represent a sunrise and a 
moonlight effect. The chimney-piece is treated in a 
very peculiar style. It is clear that in those days 
people spent a great deal of their time at their own 
firesides. All sorts of important events took place 
there. The fire-place, all of gilt bronze, is a wonder- 
ful bit of work; the chimney-piece itself is exquisitely 
finished, the shovel and tongs are beautifully mod- 
elled, the bellows are quite lovely. The tapestry in 
the fire-screen comes from the Gobelins works, and it 
is exquisitely mounted. The merry figures that run 
along the outline, the feet, the cross-bar of the frame, 
are all enchanting; the whole is carried out as care- 
fully as if it had been for a fan. Who gave her that 
pretty bit of furniture, of which she was so fond? I 
wish I knew. How often have I seen her, with her 
foot on that cross-bar, leaning back in her easy chair, 
her gown lifted half-way up to her knee by her pos- 
ture, taking up her snuff-box, laying it down, and 
then taking it up again from its place on the shelf 
between her bonbonniere and her silk mittens. What 
a coquette she was! Till the day of her death she 
took as much care of her person as if it were still the 
morrow of the time when that beautiful picture had 
been painted, and as if she were still expecting the 

12 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

flower of the Court to gather round her. That easy 
chair made me think of the inimitable wave she would 
give her skirts as she dropped into it. The women 
of that period have carried away with them certain 
characteristic secrets peculiar to their times. The 
Princess had a way of moving her head and a way of 
dropping her words and her glances, and a particu- 
lar fashion of speech, especially, which I never was 
able to discover in my own mother. It was both 
clever and good-natured; there was purpose in it, but 
there was no affectation. Her conversation was at 
once prolix and laconic; she could tell a story well, 
and she could sketch a thing in half a dozen words. 
Above all, she had that excessive breadth of judg- 
ment which has certainly influenced my own turn of 
mind. From my sixth year to my tenth I spent my 
life in her pocket — she was as fond of having me with 
her as I was of going to her. This fondness gave rise 
to more than one quarrel between her and my mother. 
Nothing fans a sentiment like the ice-cold wind of 
persecution. What a charm there was in the way she 
would say to me, " Here you are, little witch! " when, 
curious as any snake, I had slipped through doorway 
after doorway to reach her rooms. She felt I loved 
her, and she loved my artless love, which brought a 
ray of sunshine to her winter days. I don't know 
what went on in her rooms at night, but she had a 
great many visitors. In the mornings, when I crept 
tip-toe to see if her windows were open, I used to find 
the furniture in her drawing-room all pushed hither 

13 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and thither, card-tables set, and snuff lying here and 
there in heaps. The drawing-room is in much the 
same style as the bed-room. The furniture is of curi- 
ous shapes, with deeply moulded wood-work and claw 
feet. Wreaths of flowers, richly carved and finely 
modelled, twine across the mirrors and hang in fes- 
toons along their edges. On the marble tables there 
are beautiful Chinese vases. The prevailing shades 
in the furniture and hangings are poppy-colour and 
white. My grandmother was a stately and striking 
brunette. Her complexion accounts for her favour- 
ite colours. In the drawing-room I found a writing- 
table, the figures on which used to keep my eyes very 
busy in the old days. It is adorned with chiselled 
silver plaques, and was given her by one of the Gen- 
oese Lomellini. Each side of this table represents 
the occupations appropriate to one of the four sea- 
sons. The figures are all in relief, there are hundreds 
of them in each scene. I spent two hours quite alone, 
gathering up my memories, one by one, in the sacred 
precincts within which one of the most famous 
women, both for beauty and for wit, at the Court of 
Louis XV, breathed her last sigh. You know how 
suddenly I was parted from her in 1816. 

" Go and say good-bye to your grandmother," 
said my mother to me. 

I found the Princess not at all surprised, but ap- 
parently unmoved by my departure. " You are going 
to the convent, my treasure," she said. " You'll see 
your aunt there — a most excellent woman. I'll take 

14 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

care you are not sacrificed; you shall be independent, 
and able to marry whomsoever you may choose." 

Six months later she was dead. She had given 
her will into the keeping of one of her most trusted 
friends, the Prince de Talleyrand, who contrived, 
when he came to see Mile, de Chargeboeuf, to let me 
know, through her, that my grandmother forbade me 
to take religious vows. I very much hope that sooner 
or later I may meet the Prince, and then, no doubt, 
he will tell me more. 

So, my dear, though I found nobody waiting to 
greet me, I consoled myself with the shade of my dear 
Princess, and I set myself to fulfil one of our agree- 
ments, which — do you remember it? — was that we 
should mutually inform each other of the tiniest de- 
tails concerning our dwellings and our lives. It is so 
sweet to know the where and how of the existence of 
the beloved being! So be sure you describe all the 
very smallest matters about you, every single thing, 
even to the effects of the sunset among the tall trees! 

October ioth. 
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when I ar- 
rived. Towards half past five Rose came to tell me my 
mother had returned, and I went downstairs to pay 
her my respects. My mother's rooms are on the 
ground floor; they are planned just like mine, and are 
in the same wing. I live just above her, and we have 
the same private stair-case. My father lives in the 
opposite wing. But as he has all the space on the 

15 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

court-yard side, which in our case is taken up by the 
grand stair-case, his rooms are much larger than ours. 
In spite of the social duties incumbent on the position 
to which the return of the Bourbons has restored my 
parents, they still continue living on the ground floor, 
and are able to entertain there, so roomy are the 
houses built by our forefathers. I found my mother 
in her own drawing-room, in which nothing has been 
altered. As I went down the stairs I kept asking my- 
self how this woman, who has been so little of a 
mother to me that in eight years she has only writ- 
ten me two letters you wot of, would receive me. 
Thinking it unworthy of myself to simulate a tender- 
ness I could not feel, I had composed my countenance 
after the fashion of a silly nun, and when I entered 
her room I felt, inwardly, exceedingly embarrassed. 
This shyness soon passed away. My mother was per- 
fectly charming. She made no pretence of sham 
tenderness. She was not cold; she did not treat me 
as if I had been her best beloved daughter. 

She welcomed me as though we had only parted 
the night before. She was the gentlest, the frankest 
of friends. She spoke to me as to a grown-up woman, 
and began by kissing me on the forehead. 

" My dear child," she said. " If you are to die of 
your convent, you had much better come and live 
with us. You have upset your father's plans and 
mine, but the days of blind obedience to parents are 
gone by. M. de Chaulieu's intention, with which mine 
agrees, is that nothing shall be left undone which can 

16 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

make your life pleasant and enable you to see the 
world. At your age, I should have thought as you 
do. So I have no feeling against you on that score; 
you are not capable of understanding what we asked 
of you. You will not find any absurd severity in 
me. If you have doubted my affection you will soon 
find out you were mistaken. Though I intend to 
leave you in perfect freedom, I think you will do 
wisely to listen, at first, to the advice of a mother 
who will treat you as if you were her sister." 

The Duchess spoke in a soft voice, and as she 
talked she straightened my school-girl's cape. She 
fascinated me. She is eight-and-thirty, and she is an 
angel of beauty. She has blue eyes that are almost 
black, eye-lashes like silk, not a line on her forehead, 
her skin so pink and white you would fancy she 
painted, wonderful shoulders and bust, a waist as 
slight and well curved as your own; an extraordinarily 
beautiful hand, as white as milk; finger-nails that hold 
the light, they are so polished; her little finger a little 
separate from the other four, her thumb as smooth 
as ivory. And then she has a foot to match her hand 
— the Spanish foot of Mile, de Vandenesse. If she is 
like this at forty, she will be beautiful still, at sixty. 

I answered her, my dear, as a submissive daughter 
should. I was all she had been to me, and I was better 
still. Her beauty had conquered me; I forgave her for 
forsaking me. I realized that such a woman had been 
swept off her feet by her queenly position. I said all 
this to her, simply, as though I had been talking to 

i 7 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

you. Perhaps she had not expected to hear words of 
affection from her daughter's lips. The tribute of my 
honest admiration touched her deeply, her manner 
changed and grew even more gracious; she dropped 
the second person plural. 

" You are a good child," she said, " and I hope we 
shall continue friends." 

The words struck me as being exquisitely artless. 
I would not have her see how I took them, for I real- 
ized at once that I must let her think she has much 
more wit and cleverness than her daughter. So I 
played the ninny, and she was delighted with me. I 
kissed her hands several times over, saying how happy 
I was at her treating me in this way, that I felt quite 
relieved, and I even confessed my terrors to her. She 
smiled, and put her arm round my neck with an affec- 
tionate gesture to draw me close to her, and kiss me 
on the forehead. 

" Dear child," she said, " we have company to 
dinner to-day. I dare say you'll agree with me that 
you had better not make your appearance in society 
until the dressmaker has made you some clothes; so, 
after you have seen your father and your brother, you 
had better go back to your own rooms." 

To this arrangement I agreed with all my heart. 
My mother's exquisite gown was my first revelation 
of the world of which we had glimpses in our dreams. 
But I did not feel the slightest touch of jealousy. 

My father entered the room. 

" Sir," said the Duchesse, " this is your daughter." 
18 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

My father suddenly became quite tender in his 
manner to me. So perfectly did he play the father's 
part, that I believed he felt it. 

" So here you are, unruly daughter/' he cried, 
taking my two hands in his and kissing them in a way 
that was more gallant than paternal. Then he drew 
me close, put his arm round my waist and clasped me 
to him, kissing my cheeks and forehead. 

' You'll make up for the sorrow your change of 
vocation has caused us by the pleasure your success 
in society will bring us. 

" Do you know, Madame, she is very pretty, and 
some day you may be proud of her. Here's your 
brother Rhetore. . . . Alphonse," said he to a good- 
looking young man who had just come in, " here's 
your nun-sister who wants to cast off her habit" 

My brother came forward in a very leisurely fash- 
ion, took my hand and shook it. 

" Why don't you kiss her? " said the Duke. And 
he kissed me on each cheek. 

" I am very glad to see you, sister," he said, " and 
I'm on your side against my father." 

I thanked him, but I think he might have come 
to Blois, when he used to go to Orleans to see our 
brother, the Marquis, in his quarters there. Fearing 
strangers might appear, I beat a retreat. I settled a 
few things in my own room and laid out all I needed 
for writing to you on the red velvet top of my beauti- 
ful table, pondering, meanwhile, over my new sur- 
roundings. 

19 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Thus, first and last, dearest love, has come to pass 
the return of the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of 
the greatest families in France to the bosom of her 
kindred, after an absence lasting some nine years. 
The journey had tired me, and so had the emotions 
of this family meeting. Wherefore I sought my bed, 
just as I should have sought it in the convent, as soon 
as I had eaten my supper. They have even kept the 
little Dresden knife and fork and spoon my dear old 
Princess used whenever she took it into her head to 
have a meal served to her apart, in her own rooms. 



20 



II 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

November 25th. 

The next morning I found my rooms had been 
set in order and prepared for me by old Philippe, who 
had put flowers into all the vases, so I settled down at 
last. But it had never occurred to anybody that a 
school-girl from the Carmelite convent was likely to 
feel hungry early in the morning, and Rose had the 
greatest difficulty in getting me some breakfast. 

" Mademoiselle went to bed just when dinner was 
being served, and she got up just after her father had 
come home," she said. 

I sat down to write. Towards one o'clock my 
father knocked at the door of my little sitting-room 
and asked if he might come in. I opened the door, he 
entered and found me writing to you. 

" My dear," he said, " you have to buy your 
clothes and settle down here. In this purse you will 
find twelve thousand francs. That represents one 
year of the income I shall allow you for your personal 
expenses. You must settle with your mother about 
engaging a governess who will suit you, if you do 
not care about Miss Griffiths, for Madame de Chaulieu 

21 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

will not have time to go out with you in the mornings. 
You will have a carriage and a servant at your orders." 

" Let me keep Philippe," I said. 

" So be it," he answered. " But do not worry 
yourself, your own fortune is large enough to prevent 
your being a burden either to your mother or to me." 

" Should I be taking a liberty if I asked you to tell 
me the amount of my fortune? " 

" Not in the least, my child," he replied. " Your 
grandmother left you five hundred thousand francs. 
These were her savings, for she would not rob her 
family of a single foot of land. The money was in- 
vested in the Grand Livre; the interest has accumu- 
lated, and it now brings in about forty thousand francs 
a year. I had intended to apply this sum to settling 
a fortune on your second brother, and you have great- 
ly upset my plans. But in time, perhaps, you will 
agree to them. I shall depend on you for everything. 
You seem to me far more sensible than I had thought. 
There is no need for me to tell you how a Demoi- 
selle de Chaulieu should conduct herself. The pride 
stamped on your features gives me full security as to 
that. Among us, such precautions as are taken with 
regard to their daughters by smaller folk would be 
insulting. Any light word spoken about you might 
cost the life of the person who dared to utter it, or 
that of one of your own brothers, if Heaven should 
prove unjust. I will say no more to you on that 
head. Farewell, dear child! " 

He kissed me on the forehead and departed. The 

22 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

thing I cannot explain to myself is that after having 
persevered in it for nine years he should have aban- 
doned his plan. I like the straightforwardness with 
which my father spoke. There was nothing ambig- 
uous in what he said. My fortune is intended for his 
son, the Marquis. Who has shown pity on me, then? 
Was it my mother? Was it my father? Can it have 
been my brother? 

There I sat on my grandmother's sofa, staring at 
the purse my father had left on the mantel-piece, at 
once pleased, and yet displeased, with an attention 
which had attracted my mind to a question of money. 

It's true, indeed, that I need not think about it 
any more. My doubts are cleared up, and there was 
something fine in the way he spared me all hurt to my 
pride in connection with the subject. Philippe has 
spent the day going about to the different shops and 
tradesmen who are to undertake my metamorphosis. 
A famous dressmaker of the name of Victorine has 
been with me, as well as a lingere. I am as impa- 
tient as a child to know what I shall be like when 
I have cast off the sack in which the regulation cos- 
tume of our convent has hitherto enveloped us. But 
all these people expect to be allowed a great deal 
of time. The stay-maker says he must have a week 
if I don't want to spoil my figure. So I have a fig- 
ure! This grows serious. Janssen, the shoemaker 
to the Opera, has positively assured me I have my 
mother's foot. I have spent my whole morning over 
these important matters. I have even seen a glove- 

23 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

maker, who came to take the measure of my hand. I 
have given my orders to the lingere. At my dinner- 
time, which was that of the family lunch, my mother 
told me we were to go together to the milliner's, so as 
to form my taste, and teach me how to order my own 
bonnets. This beginning of my independence makes 
me feel as giddy as a blind man who has just recovered 
his sight. I can judge now of what a Carmelite is like 
beside a society girl. The difference is so great that 
we could never have conceived it. During lunch my 
father was very absent, and we left him to his own 
thoughts; he is much mixed up with all the King's 
secrets. He had utterly forgotten me; he will only 
remember me when I happen to be necessary to him — 
that I saw clearly. In spite of his fifty years, my father 
is a most attractive man. His figure is young, he is 
well built, fair; his appearance and ways are charming. 
He has the face of a true diplomat, speaking and silent 
at once. His nose is slight and delicate; his eyes are 
dark. What a good-looking couple they are! How 
many strange thoughts crowded upon me then, when I 
clearly perceived that these two beings — each of them 
noble, rich, and cast in a superior mould — never live 
together, have nothing in common but their name, 
and yet keep up an appearance of union before the 
world. Yesterday the elite of the Court and diplomatic 
body were in the house. In a few days I am to go to 
a ball given by the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse, and 
shall be presented in that society I so greatly long to 
know. I am to have a dancing-master every morning. 

24 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

I must know how to dance within a month, on pain 
of not being allowed to go to the ball. Before din- 
ner my mother came to see me about my governess. 
I have kept Miss Griffiths, who was recommended 
by the English ambassador. This lady is a clergy- 
man's daughter. She is perfectly well-bred. Her 
mother was of noble birth. She is thirty-six years old, 
and she will teach me English. My Griffiths has some 
fairly well-grounded pretensions to good looks; she 
is a Scotchwoman, poor and proud; she will be my 
chaperone; she will sleep in Rose's room, and Rose 
will be under Miss Griffiths's orders. I saw in a flash 
that I was destined to govern my governess. During 
the six days we have spent together she has realized 
perfectly that I am the only person who can possi- 
bly do anything for her; and in spite of her marble 
countenance I have thoroughly realized that she will 
be very obliging to me. She seems to me a good- 
natured creature, but I have not been able to find out 
anything about what passed between her and my 
mother. 

There is another piece of news, which does not 
strike me as being particularly important. This morn- 
ing my father refused the Ministry which had been 
offered him. This accounts for his absence of mind 
yesterday. He prefers an embassy, he says, to the 
worry of public debates. He has a fancy for Spain. 
All this I heard at lunch, the only moment in the day 
when my father, my mother, and my brother see each 
other in a certain amount of intimacy. On these 

25 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

occasions the servants do not come into the room 
unless they are rung for. The rest of the time, my 
brother, as well as my father, is out of doors. My 
mother is always dressing, and is never to be seen be- 
tween two o'clock and four. At four o'clock she goes 
out for an hour's drive, she receives her friends from 
six to seven, unless she is dining out, and the whole 
evening is spent in amusement — plays, balls, concerts 
or visits. Her life is so full, indeed, that I don't believe 
she ever has a quarter of an hour to herself. She must 
spend a good deal of time over her morning toilet, for 
she is perfectly beautiful when she appears at break- 
fast, which is served at half past eleven. I am begin- 
ning to understand the meaning of the noises I hear in 
her rooms. She first of all takes a bath of very nearly 
cold water; then she drinks a cup of coffee with cream, 
and cold; then she dresses. Except on extraordinary 
occasions, she is never awake before nine o'clock. In 
the summer she rides early in the morning. At two 
o'clock a young man, of whom I have not yet been 
able to catch a glimpse, comes to see her. This is our 
household life. We meet at breakfast and at dinner, 
but at this latter meal I am often alone with my 
mother, and I fancy that oftener still I shall dine with 
Miss Griffiths in my own rooms, just as my grand- 
mother used to do, for my mother very often dines 
out. The scanty interest my family has taken in me 
no longer causes me any astonishment. In Paris, my 
dear, it is a mark of heroism to care for people who are 
really near us, for we are not very often in our own 

26 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

company. How all absent folk are forgotten in this 
town! Nevertheless, I have not as yet put my foot 
outside the door. I know nothing. I am waiting to 
sharpen my wits, waiting till my dress and my appear- 
ance shall be in harmony with this outer world, the stir 
of which astounds me, although I only hear its distant 
murmur. So far I have only been out in the garden. 
The Italian opera opens in a few days. My mother 
has a box. I am wild with longing to hear Italian 
music and to see a French opera. I am beginning to 
break my convent habits and take up those of the 
outer world. I am writing to you to-night until I 
go to bed — a moment which is now put off until ten 
o'clock, the hour at which my mother goes out, un- 
less she is attending some theatrical performance. 

There are a dozen theatres in Paris. My igno- 
rance is gross, and I read a great deal, but my reading 
is confused. One book leads me on to another. I find 
the names of several fresh ones on the cover of the one 
I have in hand. But nobody can direct me, and conse- 
quently I come across some very dull ones. All the 
modern literature I have read treats of love, that sub- 
ject which used to occupy our thoughts so greatly, 
since our whole fate hangs on man and is shaped for 
his pleasure. But how inferior are these authors to 
those two young girls whom we used to call the White 
Doe and the Pet Darling, Renee and Louise. Ah, my 
sweet! How paltry and fantastic are their incidents! 
How shabby their expression of the tender feeling! 
Two books, however, have strangely delighted me. 

27 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

One is called Corinne, the other Adolphe. Talking of 
this, I asked my father if I could get a sight of 
Mme. de Stael. My mother and he and Alphonse 
all began to laugh. 

Alphonse said: " But where has she been? " 

My father answered: "We are rare simpletons. 
She has been with the Carmelites." 

" My child," said the Duchesse, gently, " Mme. de 
Stael is dead." 

" How can a woman be deceived? " said I to Miss 
Griffiths, when I had read to the end of Adolphe. 

" Why, when she is in love! " quoth Miss Griffiths. 

Tell me, Renee, do you think any man could de- 
ceive us? . . . Miss Griffiths has ended by finding out 
that I'm only half a fool, that I possess a secret educa- 
tion — that we gave each other means in our endless 
discussions. She has realized that my ignorance is 
limited to external matters. The poor soul has opened 
her heart to me. That brief answer of hers, weighed 
in the balance against every imaginable misfortune, 
made me shiver a little. Griffiths told me, over again, 
that I am not to let myself be dazzled by anything on 
earth, and that I must be on my guard against every- 
thing, and chiefly against that which will delight me 
most. She knows no more, and can tell me nothing 
further. This style of discourse is too monotonous. 
She is like the bird that can only chirp one note. 



28 






Ill 

THE SAME TO THE SAME 

December. 

Darling: Here I am, ready to make my entrance 
into the gay world, and I have striven to reach the 
wildest height of frolic, before I compose my counte- 
nance to face society. This morning, after many at- 
tempts, I beheld myself well and truly laced, shod, my 
waist drawn in, my hair dressed — myself gowned and 
adorned. I did as the men who fight duels do before 
a hostile meeting. I practised within four walls. I 
wanted to see myself in my full armour. I noted very 
complacently that I had a sort of little conquering and 
triumphant look, to which folks will have to submit 
perforce. I have looked myself over, and passed judg- 
ment on myself. I have reviewed all my forces, and so 
carried out that fine maxim of the ancients, " Know 
thyself." I found immense delight in making my 
own acquaintance. Griffiths was the only person in 
the secret of this doll's play of mine, in which I was 
child and doll at once. You think you know me? 
Not a bit. 

Here, Renee, I give you a portrait of this your 
sister disguised as a Carmelite, and now returned to 

29 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

life as a gay and worldly young lady. Provence al- 
ways accepted, I am one of the most beautiful people 
in France. That seems to me a truthful summing up 
of this delightful chapter. Deficiencies I have, but 
if I were a man, I should love them. They are all 
points that are rich in future promise. When a girl 
has spent a fortnight admiring the exquisite round- 
ness of her mother's arms, and that mother, my dear, 
the Duchesse de Chaulieu, she is naturally grieved 
when she observes her own arms to be thin. But 
she consoles herself when she perceives that her wrist 
is delicately formed, and that there is a certain tender- 
ness of outline about the hollows which the soft flesh 
will soon round and fill up and make shapely. The 
somewhat spare outline of the arms repeats itself in 
the shoulders. In fact, I have no shoulders. I have 
only two hard shoulder-blades, which make two sharp 
lines, and there is nothing supple about my figure — 
my sides look stiff and rigid. Oh, now I've told it all! 
But all the lines are clear and refined, the warm pure 
colour of health shines in the sinewy curves, life and 
blue blood course freely under the transparent skin. 
Why, the fairest daughter ever born of the fair-haired 
Eve is a negress beside me! Why, I have a foot like 
a gazelle! All my joints are daintily modelled, and 
I have the correct features of a Greek drawing. The 
flesh-tints are not softly merged together, my dear 
— I know it — but they are lively enough. I am a 
very pretty unripe fruit, and I have all the unripe 
charm pertaining to my condition. To sum it up, I'm 

30 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

like the figure rising out of a purplish lily, in my aunt's 
old missal. My blue eyes don't look foolish — they are 
proud eyes, with rims of pearly flesh about them, pret- 
tily tinged with tiny thread-like veins; my long and 
close-set eye-lashes fall like a silken fringe. My brow 
shines, my hair grows enchantingly in little waves of 
pale gold, that looks darker in the shadows, with re- 
bellious tendrils here and there, telling plainly enough 
that I am not one of your sickly fair-haired maidens 
given to fainting fits, but a full-blooded blonde from 
the South country — a blonde who strikes before any 
one has time to strike her. The hair-dresser, if you 
please, actually wanted to smooth my hair down into 
two bands and to hang a pearl on a gold chain upon 
my forehead, telling me I should make a " Middle 
Ages " effect. " Let me tell you," said I, " that I am 
not so near middle age as to need any adornment cal- 
culated to make me look younger! " 

My nose is delicate, my nostrils are well-cut, and 
the membrane that parts them is of a dainty pink. It 
is an imperious and scornful nose, and in the compo- 
sition of its tip muscle predominates over flesh to 
an extent which will prevent it ever growing thick 
or red. 

My dear creature, if all this is not enough to make 
a man marry a portionless girl, I'm sorely mistaken. 
My ears are bewitchingly curled, a pearl in each lobe 
would look yellow beside them. My neck is long — it 
has that serpentine movement which imparts so great 
an appearance of majesty. In the shadow its white- 

31 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ness takes on a golden tinge. Ah, my mouth is a 
thought too big, perhaps! But, then, it's so expres- 
sive! The colour of my lips is so brilliant, my teeth 
laugh so merrily behind them! And then, my dear, 
the whole thing is in harmony. I have a way of mov- 
ing, and a voice. I remember how my grandmother 
managed her skirts without ever laying her hand upon 
them. I am pretty, then, and I am graceful. If it so 
pleases me, I can laugh as we used to laugh together 
often, and I shall still be respected. There will be some- 
thing imposing always in the dimples light-fingered 
Mirth will make in my fair cheeks. I can drop my 
eyes, and look as though my snowy brow concealed 
an ice-cold heart. I can sit Madonna-like, with mel- 
ancholy, drooping, swan-like neck, and all the virgins 
ever painted will be fathoms deep below me. I shall 
throne higher in Heaven than they will. The man 
who would speak with me will be fain to set his voice 
to music. 

Thus I am armed at all points, and I can play the 
gamut of the coquette from its most solemn notes up 
to its sweetest trills. It is an immense advantage 
not to be uniform. My mother is neither wanton nor 
virginal. She is altogether dignified and imposing. 
The only possible change for her is when she becomes 
leonine. If she inflicts a wound she finds it difficult to 
heal it. I shall know how to wound and how to heal 
too. Thus there is no possibility of any rivalry be- 
tween us, unless we fall out about the relative perfec- 
tions of our feet and hands. I take after my father. 

32 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

He is subtle and clever. I have my grandmother's 
ways and her delightful tone of voice — a head voice, 
when I force it, a melodious chest-voice in ordinary 
tete-a-tete conversation. It seems to me it is only 
to-day I have come out of the convent. As yet I don't 
exist, as far as society is concerned, I am utterly un- 
known. What an exquisite moment! I am still 
mine own, like a newly opened flower on which no 
eye has lighted. Well, dearest, when I walked up and 
down my sitting-room and looked at myself, when I 
saw my simple convent garments lying cast aside, 
something, I know not what, rose up in my heart. 
There was regret for the past, dread of the future, fear 
of the great world, farewells to our pale daisies, so 
innocently culled, so carelessly pulled asunder. All 
these there were. But there were other things — 
those wayward fancies that I drive back into the 
depths of my soul, whither I dare not descend, and 
whence they rise up to me. 

Renee, I have a trousseau like a bride's. Every- 
thing is carefully laid away with bags of perfume in 
the cedar-wood drawers faced with lacquer-work in 
my beautiful dressing-room. I have ribbons, shoes, 
gloves, quantities of them all. My father, in the kind- 
liest way, has given me a young lady's necessary treas- 
ures — a dressing-case, a toilet service, a perfume box, 
a fan, a parasol, a prayer-book, a gold chain, a cash- 
mere shawl. He has promised to have me taught to 
ride; and further, I have learnt to dance. To-morrow, 
yes, to-morrow night, I am to make my debut. I have 
3 33 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

a white muslin dress. My hair is to be dressed a la 
Greque, with a wreath of white roses. I shall put on 
my Madonna expression. I mean to look very simple, 
and to have all the women on my side. My mother 
doesn't dream of anything of what I am writing to 
you. She believes me incapable of any serious 
thought. If she were to read my letter she would be 
stupefied with astonishment. My brother honours me 
with the most utter scorn and continues to treat me 
with the good-nature born of his indifference. He is 
a handsome young fellow, but pettish and low-spirited. 
I know his secret — neither the Duke nor the Duchesse 
have guessed it. Though he is a Duke and though 
he is young, he is jealous of his father. He has no 
State position, he has no office at Court. He can't say, 
" I'm going to the House of Parliament." I am the 
only person in this house who has sixteen free hours 
in which I can think. My father is absorbed in public 
business and his own pleasures. My mother, too, is 
busy. Not one of them ever turns back to their own 
thought, they seem always out of doors. There is not 
time enough for their life. I am excessively curious to 
know what invincible charm there can be about this 
society that keeps you out of doors from nine o'clock 
every night till two or three the next morning, that 
induces you to take so much trouble and endure so 
much fatigue. When I longed to reach it I never 
dreamt there could be such distances and such intoxi- 
cations: but, in truth, I forget that this is Paris. So 
you see, the members of a family may all live together 

34 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and not really know each other. Enter a sort of nun, 
and in a fortnight she discovers what a statesman can 
not perceive in his own house. But perhaps he does 
see it, and there is something paternal in his deliberate 
blindness. I must probe this dark matter. 



35 



IV 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

December 15th. 
Yesterday at two o'clock, on just such an au- 
tumn day as those we used to enjoy so much by the 
banks of the Loire, I went for a drive in the Champs 
Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne. So I have seen 
Paris at last! The effect of the Place Louis XV is 
really fine, but its beauty is of the order that mankind 
creates. I was well dressed, pensive, though ready 
enough to laugh; my face looked calmly out under a 
bewitching hat; my arms were folded. I did not win 
a single smile. Not one poor young man stopped 
short in his astonishment; not a soul turned round to 
look at me; and yet the carriage progressed with a de- 
liberation that was in harmony with my attitude. But 
I was mistaken. One fascinating Duke, who passed 
me by, turned his horse sharply back. This man, who 
saved my vanity in the public sight, was my own father, 
whose pride, he tells me, was agreeably tickled by my 
appearance. I met my mother, who wafted me a little 
greeting that looked like a kiss upon her finger tips. 
My Griffiths, who knows not what an arriere pensee 
means, glanced carelessly about her, this way and 
that. To my thinking, a young lady should always 

36 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

know exactly what she is looking at. I felt furious. 
One man scrutinized my carriage most attentively 
and took no notice of me whatever. This latter indi- 
vidual was probably a coach-builder. I have been 
mistaken in my estimate of my own power: beauty, 
that rare privilege that God alone bestows, is more 
common in Paris than I had fancied. Simpering be- 
ings reaped courteous salutations. Red-faced women 
came in view, and men said to themselves, " There she 
is! " My mother was enormously admired. There is 
an answer to this riddle, and I will seek it out. Speak- 
ing generally, the men, my dear, struck me as being 
very ugly. The good-looking ones are unpleasing 
likenesses of us women. I know not what evil genius 
invented their dress. Compared with that of the last 
two centuries its awkwardness is something surpris- 
ing. It has no brilliancy, no colour, no poetry. It 
appeals neither to the senses, the intellect, nor the eye, 
and it must be inconvenient. It is scant and short in 
cut. The hats struck me particularly. They are like 
the segment of a pillar. They don't follow the shape 
of the head. But I am assured it is easier to bring 
about a revolution than to bring in becoming hats. 
In France a man's courage fails him at the idea of 
wearing a round-crowned felt head-piece, and for 
want of one day's bravery they suffer absurd hats all 
their lives. And then we are told Frenchmen are 
fickle! Anyhow, the men are perfectly frightful. All 
the faces I have seen are hard and worn, without the 
slightest look of peace or calm. The lines are harsh, 

37 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and there are wrinkles that tell of disappointed ambi- 
tions and unsatisfied vanities. A fine forehead is a 
rare occurrence. 

" So these are the Parisians! " said I to Miss Grif- 
fiths. 

" Very charming and witty men," she answered. 

I held my peace. An unmarried woman of thirty- 
six keeps a mine of indulgence for others in her heart. 

That evening I went to a ball, and stood beside my 
mother, who took me on her arm and was well re- 
warded for her pains. All the honours of the evening 
were. hers. I was a pretext for the most pleasing flat- 
teries. She was clever enough to set me dancing with 
various idiots, who all descanted on the heat, as if I 
were freezing, and on the beauty of the entertainment, 
as if I were blind. Not one of them failed to fall into 
ecstasies over one strange, unheard of, extraordinary, 
singular, whimsical fact — that of beholding me for the 
first time. My dress, which I had thought so en- 
chanting when I walked alone up and down my white- 
and-gold sitting-room, was barely noticeable among 
the wonderful adornments worn by most of the 
women present. Each lady had her faithful circle, and 
they all watched each other out of the corner of 
their eyes. Several, like my mother, blazed with tri- 
umphant beauty. A girl does not count at a ball at 
all, she is a mere dancing-machine. With a few rare 
exceptions, the men were no better than those I saw 
in the Champs Elysees. They look worn-out, there is 
no character about their faces, or rather they all have 

38 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the same character. The proud and vigorous expres- 
sions we see in the pictures of our ancestors, who 
united physical strength with moral force, no longer 
exist. Yet at this gathering there was one highly 
gifted man, whose great beauty of face made him 
stand out from the general crowd. But he did not 
impress me as he should have done. I do not know 
his works, and he is not of noble blood. However 
great may be the genius and the qualities possessed by 
a bourgeois, or a man who has been ennobled, not one 
drop of blood flows in my veins for him. And besides, 
this individual seemed to me so self-occupied, so little 
concerned about others, that he made me feel we can 
only be things, not beings, in the eyes of such great 
seekers after thought. When a man of talent falls in 
love, he must give up writing. Otherwise he does not 
really love; for there is something in his brain that 
takes precedence of his mistress. All this I seemed 
to read in the demeanour of this gentleman, who is, I 
am told, an orator, a teacher, a writer, and whom his 
ambition turns into the humble servant of all great- 
ness. I made up my mind at once. I concluded it 
was quite unworthy of me to bear society a grudge for 
my own lack of success, and I began to dance quite 
unconcernedly. Further, I found I enjoyed dancing 
very much. I heard various uninteresting pieces of 
gossip about people with whom I had no acquaint- 
ance. But perhaps one has to know a great many 
things of which I am still ignorant before one can 
understand these stories, for I saw that most men and 

39 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

women took a lively pleasure in saying or listening to 
certain sentences. Society is full of riddles, the an- 
swers to which seem difficult to find. There are mani- 
fold intrigues, too. I have fairly sharp eyes and keen 
ears, and as to my powers of comprehension, you 
know them, Mile, de Maucombe! 

I went home weary and delighted with my weari- 
ness. I very artlessly expressed my sensations to my 
mother, and she told me I was never to confide that 
sort of thing to any one but her. 

" My dear child," she added, " good taste con- 
sists as much in knowing when to keep silence as 
when to speak." 

This warning helped me to understand the nature 
of certain sensations concerning which one should be 
silent to every one, perhaps even to one's own mother. 
With a single glance I took in the whole field of 
feminine dissimulation. I can assure you, dear soul, 
that we two, with the boldness born of our innocence, 
would be two tolerably wide-awake little gossips. 
How much teaching lies in a finger laid on lip, a word, 
a glance! In one instant, I felt timid to a degree. 
What ! must I not express the natural delight I found 
in dancing? " Then," said I to myself, "what about 
my inner feelings? " I went to bed feeling sad. I am 
still sharply conscious of the effect of this first col- 
lision between my frank and joyous nature and the 
hard laws of the social world. Already I have left 
some scraps of my white fleece hanging on the way- 
side brambles. Adieu, my angel! 

40 



V 

FROM RENEE DE MAUCOMBE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 

October. 
How deeply your letter moved me, especially 
when I compared our two destinies! How brilliant is 
the society in which you are to live! How peaceful 
the retreat in which I shall end my obscure career! 
One fortnight after my arrival at the Chateau de 
Maucombe — of which I have talked to you so much 
that I need not speak of it again, and where I found 
my own room very much as I had left it — though now 
I can appreciate the splendid outlook upon the Ge- 
menos Valley, on which, in my childish days, I used 
to gaze with unseeing eyes — my father and mother, 
accompanied by my two brothers, took me to dine 
with one of our neighbours, an old M. de l'Esto- 
rade, a nobleman who has grown very rich, as pro- 
vincial people can grow rich, by dint of avarice. This 
old gentleman had not been able to protect his only 
son from the greedy hands of Bonaparte. After hav- 
ing saved him from conscription, he was obliged, in 
1813, to send him to serve in the army in the Garde 
d'Honneur. After the battle of Leipsic, the old Baron 
heard no more tidings of his son. In 1814, he waited 

4i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

on M. de Montriveau, who told him he had seen 
his son taken prisoner by the Russians. Mme. de 
l'Estorade died of grief, while fruitless inquiries were 
still being made in Russia. The Baron, a very re- 
ligious-minded old man, practised that noble the- 
ological virtue which we used to practise at Blois 
— Hope! Hope brought his son before his eyes in 
dreams, and for his son he laid aside his income, 
and looked after his boy's share in the inheritance due 
to him from Mme. de l'Estorade's family. Nobody 
ventured to make game of the old gentleman. I 
guessed, at last, that the unhoped for reappearance of 
this son had been the cause of my own recall. Who 
would ever have guessed that while our thoughts 
roved idly hither and thither, my future husband was 
slowly making his way on foot across Russia, Poland, 
and Germany. His evil fate never forsook him till he 
reached Berlin, whence the French minister assisted 
him to get back to France. The celebrity of the 
name of the elder M. de l'Estorade, a small provincial 
nobleman, with an income of some ten thousand 
francs a year, is not sufficiently European to have 
kindled any special interest in the Chevalier de 
l'Estorade — a title with a decided smack of the adven- 
turer about it. The accumulations of an annual in- 
come of twelve thousand francs, Mme. de l'Estorade's 
own fortune, together with the father's savings, have 
provided the poor Garde d'Honneur with what in 
Provence is a considerable fortune — something like 
two hundred and fifty thousand francs, independent 

42 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

of real estate. Just before his son came back to 
him, old M. de l'Estorade bought a fine bit of 
property which had been badly managed, and pro- 
poses to plant it with ten thousand mulberry trees, 
which he had reared in his nursery garden with a spe- 
cial view to this very purchase. When the Baron 
recovered his son, his one idea was to find him a wife, 
and that wife a girl of noble birth. My father and 
mother fell in, as regards me, with their neighbour's 
plan, as soon as the old gentleman informed them of 
his willingness to accept Renee de Maucombe with- 
out any dowry, and to formally settle on the said 
Renee the amount she should legally have inherited 
from her parents. As soon as my second brother, 
Jean de Maucombe, came of age, he signed a deed 
acknowledging the receipt of an advance on the fam- 
ily inheritance amounting to one-third of the sum 
total. Thus do well-born Provencal families evade 
the Sieur de Bonaparte's vile Code Civil, which will 
send as many girls to the convent as it has already 
assisted to the altar. According to the little I have 
heard said on the matter, there is great difference of 
opinion among the French nobility as to these im- 
portant subjects. 

That dinner, my dear creature, was for an interview 
between your darling and the exile. Let me recount 
everything in its proper order. The Comte de Mau- 
combe's servants put on their old embroidered liveries 
and laced hats, the coachman got into his big boots. 
We sat, five of us, in the old coach, and we arrived in 

43 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

all our majesty by two o'clock, for dinner at three, 
at the country-house which the Baron de l'Estorade 
makes his home. My father-in-law does not possess a 
chateau — it is a plain country-house, standing at the 
foot of one of our hills, at the mouth of our lovely 
valley, the pride of which certainly is our own old Cas- 
tle of Maucombe. This country-house is just a plain 
country-house — four flint walls, faced with a yellow- 
ish cement, and roofed with curved tiles of a beautiful 
red colour. The rafters bend under the weight of 
these tiles. The windows, cut in the walls without any 
attempt at symmetrical arrangement, have huge yel- 
low-painted shutters. The garden around the dwell- 
ing is a regular Provengal garden, shut in by low walls 
built of big round pebbles, arranged in layers, and in 
which the mason's skill is exemplified by the fashion in 
which he laid the said pebbles, one row flat and the 
next standing up on edge. The layer of mud that in- 
cases them is falling off in places. What raises this 
country-house to the dignity of a mansion is the iron- 
work entrance gates opening on to the high-road. 
Those gates cost many a sacrifice. They are so thin 
and poor they remind me of Sceur Angelique! The 
house has a flight of stone steps, the door is graced 
with a pent-house porch that no peasant of the Loire 
would endure on his neat white-stone house with its 
blue roof on which the sun laughs. The garden, 
like all the surrounding ground, is horribly dusty, 
the trees are all burnt up. It is easy to see that 
for many a long day the Baron's whole life has been 

44 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

spent in getting up and going to bed and getting 
up again, without giving a thought to anything save 
to laying by one copper coin after another. He eats 
the same kind of food as his two servants — a Pro- 
vencal lad and his wife's old maid. There is very 
little furniture in the rooms. Yet the De l'Esto- 
rade household had done its best, ransacked its cup- 
boards, taxed all its resources for this dinner, which 
was served to us on old, black, battered, silver plate. 
The exile, my dear, is like his gates, very thin and 
poor. He is pale, he has suffered, he is taciturn. He 
is seven-and-thirty, and he looks as if he were fifty. 
The ebony of his once splendid tresses is streaked with 
white like a lark's wing. His fine blue eyes are sunk 
in his head. He is a little deaf, which makes him like 
the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. Neverthe- 
less, I have graciously consented to become Mme. de 
l'Estorade and to accept a dowry of two hundred and 
fifty thousand francs, but only on the express under- 
standing that I am to be allowed to rearrange the 
country-house and lay out a park round it. I have ex- 
tracted a formal promise from my father to make over 
to me a small water supply, which can be carried 
hither from Maucombe. Within a month I shall be 
Mme. de l'Estorade. For I am loved, my dear! A 
man who has dwelt in Siberian snows is very much dis- 
posed to admire those black eyes which, so you used 
to tell me, ripen the very fruit I look at. Louis de 
l'Estorade appears exceedingly happy to marry " the 
fair Renee de Maucombe," thus is your friend proudly 

45 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

described. While you are making yourself ready to 
reap all the joys of the fullest of lives — that of a 
daughter of the House of Chaulieu in Paris, where 
you will reign supreme — your poor love, your Renee, 
that child of the desert, has fallen from the Empyrean 
heights to which we both had soared, down to a fate 
as ordinary as that of a field daisy. 

Yes, I have vowed to myself that I will be the con- 
solation of this young man who has had no youth, who 
passed from his mother's lap to that of the war god- 
dess, and from the delights of a country home to 
Siberian frosts and toils. The uniform tenor of my 
future existence will be varied by the humble pleas- 
ures of a rural life. I will extend the oasis of the 
Gemenos Valley all about my house, which shall stand 
in the majestic shade of splendid trees. Here, in 
Provence, I will have lawns that are always green. I 
will spread my park up on to the hill, and on its high- 
est point I will set some dainty summer-house, 
whence, perhaps, I may get a glimpse of the shining 
Mediterranean. Orange and lemon trees, all the rich- 
est products of botany, shall embellish my retreat, and 
here I shall be the mother of children; a natural, im- 
perishable poetry will environ us. If I am faithful to 
my duty, I need fear no ill-fortune. My father-in-law 
and M. de l'Estorade share my feelings about religion. 
Ah, dearest! Life looks to me just like one of our 
great French high-roads, smooth and quiet and 
shaded by everlasting trees. There will hardly be two 
Bonapartes in this one century! I shall be able to 

4 6 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

keep my children, if I have any, to rear them and 
bring them up to man's estate. I shall enjoy my life 
in theirs. If you do not fail to reach your appointed 
destiny — you who will be the most powerful woman 
upon earth — your Renee's children will have an active 
protectress. Then farewell, for me at least, to the 
romantic tales and fantastic situations of which we 
used to fancy ourselves the heroines. I know the 
story of my life already and beforehand. It will be 
marked by such great events as the teething of the 
young De l'Estorades, their meals, the havoc they will 
wreak on my shrubberies and my person. To em- 
broider their caps, to be loved and admired by a poor 
ailing man, here at the mouth of the Gemenos Valley 
— these will be my pleasures. Some day, perhaps, this 
country lady will go and spend her winters at Mar- 
seilles. But even then she will only appear on the 
tiny provincial stage, where but little danger lurks be- 
hind the scenes. There will be nothing for me to fear, 
not even one of those admirations which may give just 
cause for a legitimate pride. We shall take a deep in- 
terest in silkworms, because we shall have mulberry 
.leaves to sell. We shall learn to know all the strange 
vicissitudes of Provencal life, and the storms of a 
household in which there can not be any possible quar- 
rel. M. de l'Estorade has formally announced his in- 
tention to be ruled by his wife. Now, as I shall do 
nothing to keep him up to this wise resolution, he will 
most probably persist in it. You, dear Louise, will 
constitute the romantic side of my existence. So, 

47 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

mind you tell me all about your balls and parties. Let 
me know how you are dressed, what flowers you 
wreathe in your beautiful fair hair, what the men say 
and how they behave. I shall be with you, listening, 
dancing, feeling the tips of your fingers gently 
squeezed. How I should like to amuse myself in 
Paris, while you played house-mother at La Crampade 
— that is the name of our country-house! Poor dear 
man who thinks he's only marrying one woman! Will 
he find out we are two? I am beginning to talk fool- 
ishness, and as I must cease doing it, except by proxy, 
I'll stop short. A kiss, then, on each of your cheeks. 
My lips are still maiden lips. He has not dared to do 
more than hold my hand. Oh, there's something 
rather alarming about his respectfulness and pro- 
priety! Well there, I am beginning again! Farewell, 
my dear one! 

P. S. — I have just opened your third letter. My 
dear, I have about a thousand francs at my command. 
Please spend them for me on pretty things that could 
not be had in this neighbourhood, nor even at Mar- 
seilles. Remember that none of the old folk on either 
side know any one with good taste, to do their Paris 
commissions for them. I will answer the letter later. 



4 8 



VI 

FROM DON FELIPE HENAREZ TO DON FERNANDO 

Paris, September. 
The heading of this letter, my dear brother, will 
show you that the chief of your family is in no danger. 
If the massacre of our ancestors in the Court of Lions 
did turn us, despite ourselves, into Spaniards and 
Christians, it left us a legacy of Arab caution: — and 
I owe my safety, perhaps, to the blood of the Aben- 
cerages that flows in my veins. Fright turned Ferdi- 
nand into so good an actor that Valdez believed his 
protestations. But for me the poor admiral would 
have been lost. None of the Liberals will ever learn 
to know the nature of a King. But I had long been 
familiar with the character of that particular mem- 
ber of the Bourbon House. The more his Majesty 
averred he would protect us, the more deep were 
my suspicions. A true Spaniard does not need to 
reiterate his promises. The man who talks too much 
seeks to deceive. Valdez got on board an English 
ship. As for me, when the fate of my beloved Spain 
was lost in Andalusia, I wrote to my steward in 
Sardinia to provide for my safety. Some skilful coral 
fishers waited for me in a boat at a certain place on the 
4 49 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

sea-coast. While Ferdinand was begging the French 
authorities to seize my person, I was safe in my 
Barony of Macumer, surrounded by bandits, who set 
every law and every vengeance at defiance. The head 
of the last Hispano-Moorish house in Granada found 
an African desert, and even an Arab horse, on the do- 
main that had come down to him from the Saracens. 
When these bandits, who but yesterday dreaded 
my justice, learnt that they were sheltering the 
Duque de Soria — their master, a Henarez, at last, the 
first who had come near them since the days when the 
Moors held the island — from the vengeance of the 
King of Spain, their eyes flashed with wild joy and 
pride. Two-and-twenty carabines were instantly of- 
fered to make away with Ferdinand de Bourbon, that 
scion of a race unknown when the victorious Aben- 
cerages first appeared on the banks of the Loire. I 
thought I might have lived on the income of this huge 
property, upon which, unluckily, w r e have bestowed 
such scant attention. But my stay there has con- 
vinced me of my own mistake, and of the truthfulness 
of Quevedo's reports. The poor man had two-and- 
twenty human existences at my service, but not a 
single coin. There are savannas covering twenty 
thousand acres, but not a house of any kind: virgin 
forests, but not a stick of furniture. A million of 
piastres must be spent, and the owner must have made 
his home there for fifty years, before that splendid ter- 
ritory can be turned to profit. I will think it over. 
Vanquished men ponder as they flee, both on them- 

50 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

selves and on their lost cause. As I looked at that 
splendid corpse, already gnawed by monkish rats, 
tears swam in my eyes. I recognised the sad fate 
awaiting Spain. At Marseilles I heard of Riego's 
end, and reflected mournfully that my life, too, will 
end in martyrdom — but one that will be obscure and 
slow\ Will life be life without the possibility of devot- 
ing it to one's country, or living it for a woman? 
Love, victory, these two aspects of the same idea, 
were the law graven on our sword-blades, written in 
letters of gold on the archways of our houses, repeat- 
ed by the fountains that sprang in our marble basins. 
But in vain does my heart cling fanatically to the 
command. The sword is snapped, the palace lies in 
ashes, the fresh spring is swallowed up in barren 
sands! Here, then, is my last will. 

Don Fernando, you will soon understand why I 
checked your eagerness and commanded you to con- 
tinue faithful to the Rey netto. As your brother and 
your friend, I beseech you to obey me; as your master, 
I command you! You will go to the King, you will 
pray him to bestow my grandeeships and my pos- 
sessions, my office and my titles, on yourself. He will 
hold back; he will make one or two royal faces, may 
be. But you will tell him that Maria Heredia loves 
you, and that Maria can marry nobody but the Duque 
de Soria. Then you will see him quiver with delight. 
The huge fortune of the Heredia family prevented him 
from accomplishing my ruin. He will think it com- 
plete then, and all I leave behind me will instantly 

5i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

be bestowed on you. You shall marry Maria. I had 
guessed the secret of the love against which you were 
both struggling, and I have prepared the old Count's 
mind for this exchange. We had bowed, Maria and I, 
to social rules and to our parents' will. You are as 
beautiful as any love-child; I, ugly as a Spanish gran- 
dee can be. You are beloved. I am the object of an 
unspoken aversion. You will soon overcome what 
little resistance my misfortunes may have inspired in 
the heart of the high-born Spanish maiden. Duque 
de Soria! your predecessor does not choose to cost 
you one touch of regret, nor to defraud you of a single 
maravedi. As Maria's jewels will replace the loss of 
my mother's diamonds to our family, you will send me 
those diamonds, which will suffice to insure me an in- 
dependent livelihood, by my old nurse Urraca, the 
only person in my household whom I intend to keep 
about me . . . No other creature knows how to 
make my chocolate properly. 

During our short-lived revolution, my constant 
labours had cut down the expenses of my life to the 
merest necessaries, and the salary of my office sufficed 
for them. You will find my income for those two 
years in your steward's keeping. This sum of money 
is my property. The marriage of a Duque de Soria 
entails a large outlay. So we will divide it between us. 
You will not refuse your bandit brother's wedding- 
present. And besides, such is my will. As the Barony 
of Macumer is not held under the King of Spain, it 
still remains with me; and I shall be able to assume a 

52 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

name and nationality if ever I should choose to be- 
come any one again. God be praised, this ends our 
business! The House of Soria is safe! 

Just at this moment, in which I become Baron de 
Macumer and nothing more, the French artillery is 
booming out its greeting to the Due d'Angouleme. 
You will understand, sir, wherefore I break off my 
letter. 

October. 
When I arrived here I had not ten double pistoles 
in the world. He must be a shabby statesman who, 
in the midst of misfortunes he has not averted, gives 
selfish thought to his own fortune. The vanquished 
Moor has his horse and the desert; the Christian 
whose hopes are shattered, the monastery and a hand- 
ful of gold pieces. Yet, so far, my resignation is no 
more than weariness. I am not so near the cloister 
as to give no thought to life. Ozalga, on the merest 
chance, had given me a few letters of introduction, 
among them one for a bookseller, who, to our fellow- 
countrymen, is very much what Galignani is to the 
English here. This man has found me eight pupils at 
three francs a lesson. I go to each pupil every second 
day. So I give four lessons and earn twelve francs 
a day — a great deal more money than I need. When 
Urraca arrives, I shall make some Spanish exile happy 
by turning over my pupils to him. I live in the 
Rue Hillerin-Bertin, in the house of a poor widow 
who takes boarders. My room looks southward over a 
little garden. I hear no noise, I see green trees, and I 

53 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

don't spend more than a piastre a day. The calm and 
pure delights I discover in this existence are quite an 
astonishment to me. 

From sunrise till ten o'clock, I smoke, and drink 
my chocolate, sitting by my window and looking at 
two Spanish shrubs — a broom, standing out against a 
mass of jessamine, gold on a white background, a sight 
that will always stir the soul of any descendant of the 
Moors. At ten o'clock I start forth to give my 
lessons until four. Then I come home to my dinner, 
and after that I smoke and read till bedtime. I can go 
on leading this life — in which solitude and company, 
labour and meditation, all bear a part — for a very long 
time. So, Don Fernando, you may be happy; my 
abdication is an accomplished fact, and there has been 
no backward glance, no after-regret as in the case of 
Charles V, nor any longing to play the old part again, 
as in Napoleon's. Five days and nights have gone by 
since I made my will. Seen through my meditations, 
they are like a thousand years. Greatness, titles, 
wealth, are to me as though they had never been. 
Now that the barrier of respect that parted us is bro- 
ken down, I can open my heart to you, dear boy. That 
heart, hidden under its impenetrable mask of gravity, 
is full of tenderness and of a power of devotion which 
have found no outlet. But no woman — not even she 
who was destined from her cradle to be my wife — has 
ever guessed at their existence. There lies the secret 
of my feverish devotion to politics. Having no lady- 
love to worship, I worshipped Spain. And now Spain, 

54 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

too, has failed me. Now that I am nothing, I can 
contemplate the ruin of my individual existence, and 
I ask myself why life was ever bestowed on me, and 
when it will depart? Wherefore has the most chival- 
rous of all races transmitted its primitive virtues, its 
African passion, its burning poetry, to its last scion? 
Is the seed destined to die within its rough husk with- 
out sending up a single stalk, or scattering its Orien- 
tal perfume from even one tall bright-hued calyx? 
What crime was mine, as yet unborn, that I should 
never have inspired love in any human being? Was 
I, then, from my very birth but an ancient frag- 
ment, fated to be cast up on some barren shore? 
Within my own soul I discover my hereditary deserts, 
lighted by a sun so fierce that no plant can flourish 
on them. Here, more fittingly than in any other 
place, this proud remnant of a fallen race, this use- 
less strength, this wasted love, this young man, old 
before his time, shall await the advent of that closing 
mercy — Death! Under these misty skies, alas! no 
spark will rekindle the flame buried deep beneath the 
ashes. Thus my last words may well be those of Jesus 
Christ, " My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" A 
terrible cry, truly, which no man has dared to fathom. 
Imagine then, Fernando, what happiness I find in 
living afresh in Maria and in you. Henceforward I 
shall contemplate you with all the pride of a creator 
who glories in his work. Love each other faithfully. 
Give me no cause for sorrow. A storm between you 
two would hurt me more than it would hurt your- 

55 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

selves. Our mother had a presentiment that one of 
these days events would crown her secret hopes. Per- 
haps a mother's longing is a contract between her and 
the Almighty! And, then, she was surely one of those 
mysterious creatures who have the power of holding 
converse with Heaven, and of carrying some vision 
of futurity back to earth. How often have I read in 
the lines upon her forehead that she would fain see 
Fernando the possessor of Felipe's wealth and hon- 
ours! If I said it to her, she would answer me with 
two great tears, and give me a glimpse of the wounds 
of a heart which should have belonged wholly to each 
one of us, but which an overmastering love had given 
to you alone. This being so, her spirit will surely 
hover over your heads as you bow them before the 
altar. Will there be one caress at last for Felipe, 
Dona Clara? Behold him: he gives you, best be- 
loved, all, even the maiden you yourself have led un- 
willingly to his embrace. What I have done is pleas- 
ing in the sight of all women, of the dead, of the 
King. It is the will of God. Therefore, Don Fer- 
nando, lift no ringer against it. Obey me and hold 
your peace. 

P. S. — Desire Urraca never to call me anything 
but Monsieur Henarez. Not a word about me to 
Maria. You must be the only living being ac- 
quainted with the secret of the last converted Moor, 
in whose veins runs the blood of the mighty stock 
which sprang from the desert and is about to end in 
solitude. Farewell! 

56 



VII 

FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE 

January, 1824. 
What! You are to be married at once! But 
was there ever such a surprise? Within one month 
you undertake to marry a man — without knowing 
him, without knowing anything about him. The man 
may be deaf — there are so many ways of being deaf. 
He may be sickly, tiresome, unendurable. Don't you 
see, Renee, what they want of you? You are neces- 
sary to them to carry on the splendid line of the De 
l'Estorades, and that's the whole story. You are go- 
ing to turn yourself into a provincial lady. Was that 
what we promised each other? If I were you, I'd 
rather row round about the Isles of Hyeres in a caique 
till some Algerine corsair carried me off and sold me 
to the Grand Signior. That way I'd be a Sultana first 
of all, and then Sultana Valide. I'd turn the seraglio 
upside down as long as I was young, and even when I 
was old. You are only leaving one convent to go into 
another. I know you; you are a coward, you'll enter 
the married state as submissively as a lamb. Be ruled 
by me. Come up to Paris, we'll drive all the men wild, 
and we shall end by reigning like two queens. Within 

57 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

three years, my dearest love, your husband will be able 
to get himself elected Deputy. I know now what 
a Deputy is. I'll explain it to you. You will play ex- 
ceedingly well upon that instrument. You'll be able 
to live in Paris, and to become, as my mother says, " a 
fashionable woman." Oh, I'll certainly not leave you 
in your country-house ! 

For the last fortnight, my dear, I have been living 
the life of the gay world. One evening at the Italiens, 
the next at the Grand Opera, and on to a ball every 
night. Ah, society is like a fairy play. The music at 
the Italiens enchants me, and while my whole being 
floats in the most divine delight, I myself am admired, 
scanned through opera-glasses. But with one glance I 
make the boldest of the young men drop his eyes. I 
have seen some charming young men. Well, there is 
not one of them who takes my fancy, not one who in- 
spires me with the emotion I feel when I hear Garcia 
sing his splendid duet with Pellegrini in Otello. 
Heavens, how jealous Rossini must have been to have 
expressed jealousy so admirably! What a passionate 
ring there is in II mio cor si divide. All this is Greek 
to you, who haven't heard Garcia. But you know 
how jealous I can be! What a poor playwright is this 
Shakespeare! Otello falls in love with glory — he wins 
victories, he gives orders, he parades up and down, 
and goes hither and thither, leaving Desdemona alone 
in a corner, and she, who sees him preferring the inan- 
ities of public life to her own self, never grows angry! 
Forsooth, such a sheep deserves to be slaughtered! 

58 



I 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Let the man I condescend to love dare to do anything 
except love me back! I am all for the lengthy ordeals 
of ancient chivalry. I look on that churlish young 
nobleman who found fault because his sovereign lady 
sent him to fetch her glove out of the lion's den, as a 
very foolish and impertinent young fellow. I've no 
doubt she had reserved some exquisite blossom of 
love for him, and he lost it, insolent boy — after having 
earned it. But here I go on chattering as if I had 
not a great piece of news to give you. My father is 
to represent the King, our master, at Madrid. I say 
our master, for I am to be a member of the Embassy. 
My mother wishes to stay here, and my father will 
take me, so as to have a lady with him. 

My dear, all this seems mighty simple to you — but 
there are huge matters underneath. In this fortnight, 
I've discovered all the secrets of the household. My 
mother would go with my father to Madrid if he could 
fake M. de Canalis with him as secretary to the Em- 
bassy. But the King appoints all the secretaries. The 
Duke does not dare either to displease the King, who 
is very despotic, or to cross my mother, and this wily 
personage fancies he will solve the difficulties of the 
situation by leaving the Duchesse here behind him. 
M. de Canalis, the great poet of the day, is the young 
man who cultivates my mother's society, and, no 
doubt, studies diplomacy with her daily from three to 
five o'clock. Diplomacy must be an interesting sub- 
jest, for he is as assiduous in his attendance as a 
gambler at the Stock Exchange. The Due de Rhe- 

59 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

tore, my eldest brother — a solemn, frigid, fanciful 
body — would be eclipsed by his father at Madrid. So 
he stays in Paris. Besides, Miss Griffiths knows 
Aphonse is devoted to an opera-dancer. How any 
man can fall in love with legs and pirouettes! We 
have noticed my brother is always present at the 
operas in which Tullia dances. He applauds the 
creature's performances, and departs when they are 
over. I believe two bad women work more harm in 
a household than an epidemic of the plague. As for 
my second brother, he is with his regiment, and I've 
not seen him yet. Thus it comes about that I am des- 
tined to be the Antigone of one of his Majesty's 
ambassadors. Perhaps I shall marry in Spain, and per- 
haps my father's idea is to marry me there without a 
portion, exactly as you are being married to that 
wreck of a former Garde cTHonneur. My father sug- 
gested that I should go with him, and offered to lend 
me his Spanish master. 

" Do you want me to make Spanish marriages? " 
The only answer he vouchsafed me was a shrewd 
glance. For the last few days he has been pleased to 
tease me during breakfast; he studies me. I dis- 
semble, and both as a parent and a future ambassador, 
I have imposed upon him cruelly. Didn't he take me 
for a fool? He would ask me what I thought of such 
a young man and of certain young ladies whom I had 
met in various houses. I replied by the most stupid 
dissertation on the colour of the hair, the figure, the 
expression of face of the young couple he men- 

60 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

tioned. My father looked disappointed to find me 
such a simpleton. He was blaming himself internally 
for having questioned me. 

" However, father," I added, " I have not told you 
what I really think. Something my mother said to me 
a little time ago, makes me fear I may fall into some 
impropriety if I talk of my impressions." 

" In your own family, you can speak openly and 
fearlessly," said my mother. 

" Well, then," I said, " so far, the young men 
strike me as being more interested than interesting, 
more taken up with themselves than with us; but they 
certainly are far from artful. They instantly drop the 
expression they have put on when they speak to us, 
and they imagine, no doubt, that we don't know how 
to use our eyes. The man who speaks to us is the 
lover, the man who has just spoken to us is the hus- 
band. As for the young ladies, they are so false that 
the only sign by which one can possibly guess at their 
character is the way they dance. Their figures and 
their movements are the only truthful things about 
them. The thing that has most startled me is the bru- 
tality of smart society. When supper is in question 
things happen that give me — in a minor degree, of 
course — an idea of what a popular riot must be. The 
general selfishness is hidden under a very partial veil 
of politeness. I had fancied Society was quite a 
different thing. Women here count for very little. 
That, perhaps, is a remnant of Bonaparte's teach- 
ings." 

61 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

" Armande is making astonishing progress," said 
my mother. 

" Mother," I said, " do you think I shall always 
ask you whether Mme. de Stael is dead? " 

My father smiled, and rose from his chair. 

Saturday. 
My dear, I haven't told you all. This is what I 
have kept back for you. The love of which we dreamt 
must be very deeply hidden. I have discovered no 
trace of it anywhere. True, I have seen a few swift 
glances interchanged in drawing-rooms. But how 
cold they looked! Our love — that world of wonders, 
of fair dreams, of exquisite realities and suffering to 
match them, those smiles that light up all Nature, 
those words that enchant, that happiness ever given 
and received, the anguish of separation, the overmas- 
tering joys of the presence of the beloved — of these, 
not a sign! Where do the gorgeous flowers of exist- 
ence bud? Who is it that lies, we or the world? I 
have seen young men by the hundred already, and not 
one has inspired me with the faintest emotion. They 
might have expressed all their admiration and devo- 
tion, they might have fought battles for me — I should 
have looked on with a callous eye. Love, my dear 
child, is so unusual a phenomenon that one may live 
out one's whole life without meeting the being on 
whom Nature has bestowed the power of making one 
happy. This consideration makes me shiver. For if 
the being in question is met late in life — what then? 

62 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

For the last few days I have begun to feel terrified 
at the thought of our fate, and to understand why so 
many women carry about sad faces under the layer of 
rouge which gives them a sham appearance of joy and 
festivity. Marriage is a mere chance, and such is 
yours. Whirlwinds of thought have passed over my 
soul. To be loved every day alike, yet with a dif- 
ference, to be loved as fondly after ten years of hap- 
piness as on the opening day. Such a love must 
cover years. There must have been so long a period 
of ungratifled longing. So many curiosities stirred, 
roused and then appeased. So many sympathies first 
excited and then satisfied. Are there laws that gov- 
ern the creations of the heart, even as there are laws 
that rule the visible works of Nature? Can cheerful- 
ness live on itself? In what proportion should the 
tears and the joys of love be mingled? 

At such a moment the chilly regularity of the fu- 
nereal, uniform, unchanging existence of the convent 
has seemed possible to me; whereas the riches, the 
splendour, the tears, the exquisite delights, the merri- 
ment, the joys, the pleasures of a well-matched, mutual, 
lawful love, have appeared to me impossible. I see 
no room in this town for the sweetness of love, for 
those blessed strolls beneath the branching arbour, 
while the full moon sheds her light on the waters and 
the tenderest entreaties are withstood. Young, rich, 
beautiful as I am, all I have to do is to fall in love. 
Love may become my life, my soul, my only occupa- 
tion. Well, in these last three months which I have 

63 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

spent going to and fro with the most impatient cu- 
riosity, I have found, amid all these brilliant, greedy, 
vigilant eyes about me — nothing at all. Not a tone 
has touched me, not one look has flooded the world 
with light for me. Music alone has filled my soul, and 
been to me what our friendship is. Sometimes, at 
night, I have spent a whole hour at my window, gaz- 
ing out on the garden, longing for something to hap- 
pen, praying that events might spring from the un- 
known source which sends them forth. Sometimes I 
have driven to the Champs filysees, fancying some 
man — the man destined to stir my slumbering soul — 
would surely appear, and follow me, and gaze at me. 
But on those days I have met mountebanks and gin- 
ger-bread sellers and conjurers, passers-by hurrying to 
their business, or lovers who fled the sight of every 
one. And I have been tempted to stop them, and cry: 
" You are happy; tell me what love is? " But I forced 
the wild fancy back and got me to my carriage, and 
vowed I would be an old maid. Love certainly is an 
incarnation, and how difficult are the conditions un- 
der which it must take place! We are not always cer- 
tain of agreeing with ourselves. How will it be when 
there are two of us? God alone can solve the prob- 
lem. I begin to think I will go back to my convent. 
If I remain in the world, I shall do things which will 
look like follies, for I cannot possibly accept the con- 
ditions I see around me. All these wound either 
my delicacy, my innermost proprieties, or my secret 
thoughts. Ah, my mother is the happiest woman in 

6 4 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the world. Her tall young Canalis adores her. My 
dearest, I have a shocking longing, now and then, to 
know what my mother and that young gentleman 
may say to each other. Griffiths tells me she has had 
all these fancies. She has felt as if she could fly at 
the women she knew were happy. She has run them 
down, torn them to pieces. According to her, virtue 
consists in burying all these savage feelings at the 
bottom of one's heart. Then, what is the bottom of 
one's heart? A store-room full of all the worst things 
in us? I am very much humiliated at not having met 
any one to adore me. I am a young lady in search 
of a husband, but I have relations, brothers, parents, 
who are all touchy. Ah, if that were what kept the 
men back, they must be terrible cowards. The char- 
acters of Chimene and of the Cid, in Le Cid, delight 
me. What an admirable play! And now, good-bye. 



65 



VIII 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

January. 
Our Spanish master is a poor refugee, who has 
been driven into exile by the part he played in the 
revolution the Due d'Angouleme has been sent to 
put down. We owe some fine entertainments here to 
his success in doing so. Though the man is a Lib- 
eral, and no doubt of the middle class, he has inter- 
ested me. I fancy he must have been sentenced to 
death. I try to induce him to talk, so as to get at 
his secret. But he is as taciturn as any Castilian 
grandee, as proud as if he were Gonsalvo of Cordova, 
and for all that as gentle and patient as an angel. He 
does not wear his pride outside him like Miss Griffiths. 
It is hidden in his heart. He forces us to render him 
his due, by the manner in which he pays us his duty, 
and severs himself from us by the respect he shows us. 
My father will have it there is a great deal of 
the nobleman about this M. Henarez, whom among 
ourselves he jokingly denominates Don Henarez. 
When I ventured to call him by this name a few days 
since, he raised his eyes, which are generally dropped, 
and shot two shafts of lightning at me which quite 

66 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

abashed me. My dear, he certainly has the finest eyes 
that ever were seen. I asked him whether I had done 
anything to annoy him, whereupon he answered me 
in his own grand and majestic tongue: 

" Senorita, I only come here to teach you Span- 
ish!" 

I felt humiliated, and the colour sprang into my 
face. I was just going to give him some thoroughly 
impertinent answer, when I remembered what our dear 
mother in God used to say to us, and then I replied: 

" If you were to reprove me in any matter, you 
would be conferring an obligation on me." 

He started, the blood rose to his olive skin, and he 
answered me in a gentle and touching voice: 

" Religion must have taught you, far better than I 
could, how to respect misfortunes. If I were a Don 
in Spain, and I had lost everything when Ferdinand 
VII triumphed, your joke would have been cruel. But 
if I am nothing but a poor teacher, is it not a heartless 
jest? Neither of these are worthy of a high-born 
lady." 

I took his hand as I said: 

" Then I will appeal to religion to make you forget 
my fault." 

He bowed his head, opened my Don Quixote and 
sat himself down. 

This little incident threw me into greater confu- 
sion than all the looks, the compliments, the remarks 
of which I was the object the night when I was most 
admired. During the lesson I looked carefully at the 
• 6 7 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

man, who was quite unconscious of my scrutiny; he 
never raises his eyes to look at me. I then discovered 
that this Spanish master, whom we took to be forty, 
is quite young — not more than six or eight and 
twenty. My governess, to whose consideration I had 
hitherto left him, called my attention to the beauty of 
his black hair and of his teeth, which are like pearls. 
As for his eyes, they are at once as soft as velvet and 
as blazing as fire. There it ends — otherwise he is 
little and ugly. We used to be told that Spaniards 
were anything but cleanly. But this man is most care- 
ful of his person, his hands are whiter than his face; 
he is rather round-shouldered, his head is very large 
and rather oddly shaped; his ugliness — he is really very 
clever-looking in spite of it — is increased by his face 
being seamed with small-pox marks. The forehead is 
exceedingly prominent. His eye-brows meet and are 
too thick, they give him a severe look, which repels 
people. He has the sickly and crabbed countenance 
of a person who ought to have died in childhood, and 
whose life has only been preserved by dint of endless 
care — just like Sister Marthe. And altogether, as my 
father puts it, his face is the face of Cardinal Ximenes 
on a small scale. My father doesn't like him, he is 
not at his ease with him. There is a natural dignity 
about our master's manner which seems to make 
our dear Duke feel uneasy. He cannot endure any 
form of superiority in his own vicinity. 

As soon as my father knows Spanish we are to start 
for Madrid. When Henarez came again, two days 

68 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

after my snubbing, I said to him, meaning it as a sort 
of sign of gratitude: 

" I am quite certain you left Spain on account of 
some political matter. If my father is sent there, as 
we hear he will be, we should be able to be of some 
service to you, and to obtain your pardon, if any sen- 
tence has been pronounced on you." 

" Nobody has it in his power to confer any obliga- 
tions on me," he replied. 

" How, sir? " I said. " Is that because you do not 
choose to accept any obligation, or is it a case of sheer 
impossibility? " 

" It is both one and the other," he answered, with 
a bow, and there was something in his tone that re- 
duced me to silence. My father's blood stirred in 
my veins. This arrogance roused my ire, and I left 
M. Henarez to himself. Yet, my dear, there is 
something fine in his refusal to accept anything from 
others. " He wouldn't even accept our friendship," 
thought I to myself, as I was conjugating a verb. 
Then I stopped short and I told him my thought, but 
in Spanish. Henarez answered very courteously that 
in such a case there must necessarily be an equality of 
feeling which was not possible under our circum- 
stances, and that the question was therefore irrele- 
vant. 

" Do you mean," I asked, trying to break down 
his gravity which so provokes me, " that there must 
be equality as to mutual feeling, or equality of rank? " 

Then he lifted those terrible eyes of his, and I 

69 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

dropped mine. My dear, this man is a hopeless riddle. 
He looked as if he were asking me whether my words 
were a declaration. There was an expression of de- 
light and of surprise, and an agony of uncertainty in 
his voice that wrung my heart. I realized that things 
which in France are accepted at their proper value, 
take on a dangerous meaning when one has to deal 
with a Spaniard, and I retired into my shell, feeling 
rather foolish. When the lesson was over he bowed 
to me, with a look that was full of humble entreaty, 
and which said: " Don't make a sport of an unhappy 
man." This sudden contrast with his usual serious 
and dignified deportment made a lively impression 
upon me. Isn't that shocking to think of and to say. 
I am certain the man possesses depths of priceless 
affection. 



70 



IX 



FROM MME. DE L ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 

December. 
All's said and done, dear child. Tis Mme. de 
l'Estorade who pens this letter to you. But nothing is 
changed between you and me. There is only one girl 
less in the world. Make your mind easy. I pondered 
what I did, and my consent was not given lightly. My 
life is settled now. The certainty that I must follow a 
clearly marked path suits both my temper and my 
mind. What we call the chances of life are perma- 
nently decided, for me, by a great moral force. We 
have lands to cultivate, we have a dwelling to embel- 
lish and adorn. I have a home to manage and enliven, 
there is a man whom I must reconcile with life. I 
shall no doubt have a family to care for, children to 
bring up. After all, life as a rule cannot well be any- 
thing very great or out of the common. Certainly 
those soaring desires which broaden soul and mind 
do not enter, apparently at least, into these plans. 
What is there to prevent me from letting the barks we 
launched on the ocean of the Infinite pursue their 
course thereon? Yet do not think that the humble 
objects to which I am devoting my existence cannot 

7i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

be touched by any passionate interest. To teach a 
poor fellow who has been the sport of many tempests 
to believe in his own happiness is a noble undertak- 
ing, and may well suffice to modify the monotony of 
my existence. I do not foresee that it need bring me 
sorrow, and I do see that there is good for me to do. 

Between ourselves, I do not love Louis de l'Es- 
torade with the love which makes a woman's heart 
throb when she hears a man's footstep, which makes her 
tremble with emotion at the very sound of his voice, 
or when his passionate glance falls upon her. But all 
the same, he is by no means displeasing to me. What 
am I going to do, you will inquire, with that instinc- 
tive feeling for the sublime, with those high thoughts 
we both of us nurse, and which are a bond between you 
and me? Yes, that has puzzled me. Well, after, all, 
will it not be a noble thing to hide them all, to use 
them unknown to others, for the good of the family — 
to turn them into means to serve the happiness of the 
beings confided to us, and to whose welfare we owe 
our best devotion? In us women, the period during 
which these faculties are at their best is a very short 
one. It will soon be over; and if my life has not been 
a wide one, it will have been calm, smooth, and free 
from vicissitudes. 

We are born with an advantage all our own, we 
can choose between love and maternity. Well, I have 
made my choice. My children shall be my gods, this 
corner of the earth shall be my El Dorado. This is all 
I can tell you to-day. Thank you for all the things 

72 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

you have sent me. Look after those ordered in the 
list I inclose in this letter. I want to bring an atmos- 
phere of luxury and elegance about me, with nothing 
of the province in it except its enchanting aspects. A 
woman who lives in solitude can never become provin- 
cial. She remains herself. I depend greatly on your 
goodness to keep me abreast of all the fashions. My 
father-in-law, in his rapture, does everything I ask, 
and is turning his house upside down. We are getting 
workmen from Paris and are modernizing the whole 
place. 



73 



X 

FROM MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE l'eSTORADE 

January. 
Oh, Renee! You've saddened me for several days 
to come. So that exquisite form, that proud and love- 
ly face, those manners instinct with natural elegance, 
that nature enriched with precious gifts, those eyes 
in which the soul may slake its thirst as in a living 
spring of love, that heart overflowing with exquisite 
tenderness, that great mind, all those rare powers, the 
growth of nature and of our mutual education, those 
treasures meant to crown love and longing with an 
unexampled wealth of poetry and passion — hours 
worth ordinary years, joys that with one graceful ges- 
ture should enslave a man forever — all are to be swal- 
lowed up in the dulness of a vulgar, commonplace 
marriage, lost in the emptiness of a life that will end 
by becoming a weariness to you. I hate the children 
you will bear already! They'll be ugly! Your whole 
life is mapped out beforehand. There is nothing left 
for you to hope, or fear, or suffer, and if, on some 
bright dazzling day you should find yourself face 
to face with the being fated to break the slumber 
into which you are now deliberately sinking. . . . 

74 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Ah, the very thought makes me shiver! Well, at 
all events you have one woman friend. No doubt, 
you'll become the guardian spirit of your valley. 
You'll learn all its beauties, you'll commune with 
Nature, you'll fill your soul with the greatness of 
her works, the slow processes of vegetation, the swift- 
ness of human thought; and as you gaze on all your 
gay flowers you'll turn your mind inwards and gaze 
into your own soul. Then, as your life flows on- 
ward between your husband and your children — he 
before and they behind you — they yelping, chatter- 
ing, frolicking; he, silent, and content — I can tell 
beforehand what you'll write to me! Your misty 
valley and your hills, barren or crested with splendid 
trees; your meadow, that will be such a curiosity in 
Provence, the clear water divided into rivulets, the 
changeful play of the lights, all the wide landscape 
about you, which God has touched with infinite va- 
riety, will remind you of the infinite monotony within 
your heart ! But at least I shall be there, my Renee, 
and you will have one friend whose heart will never be 
soiled by the smallest social pettiness — a heart that is 
yours utterly. 

Monday. 
My dear, my Spaniard is most entrancingly melan- 
choly. There is something about him — a calmness, 
an austerity, a dignity, a depth — which interests me 
beyond all words. This invariable gravity and the 
silence in which the man wraps himself, challenge 
one's curiosity. He is mute and haughty as a fallen 

75 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

king. We puzzle over him, Griffiths and I, as if he 
were a riddle. How absurd it all is! A poor language 
teacher triumphantly rivets the interest which no 
other man — not all the well-born youths, the am- 
bassadors and their attaches, the generals, the sub- 
lieutenants, the peers of France, or all their sons and 
nephews, the Court, the city — have been able to 
arouse. The man's reserve is most irritating. Pride 
overweening fills the gulf he strives, and successfully, 
to fix between himself and us. And further, he 
shrouds himself in darkness. The coquetry is his. 
The bold advances, mine. The queerness of the whole 
affair amuses me all the more because of its unim- 
portance. What is a man — a Spaniard, and a language 
teacher? I don't feel the slightest respect for any 
man, not even for a king. I consider we are superior 
to every man in the world, even the most justly fa- 
mous. Oh, how I would have ruled Napoleon! How 
he should have felt himself at my mercy, if he had 
cared for me! 

Yesterday I launched a witticism which must have 
stung Sir Henarez to the quick. He made no answer. 
My lesson was just over. He took up his hat and 
bowed to me with a glance which made me think he is 
not coming back. That suits me very well. It would 
be rather a gloomy business to enact Jean Jacques 
Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise over again. I've just 
read it, and it has given me a horror of love. That sort 
of love, all talk and discussion, strikes me as odious. 
Clarissa, again, is much too pleased with herself when 

7 6 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

she has written her tedious little letters; but, on the 
other hand, my father tells me Richardson's book is an 
admirable representation of the ordinary English- 
woman. Rousseau's strikes me as being a philosophi- 
cal disquisition in the form of letters. 

I believe love is really a purely personal poem. 
Everything these authors write on the subject is at 
once true and false. Verily, my dear creature, as 
you, henceforth, will be able to talk to me about con- 
jugal love, I believe it will be indispensable, for the 
sake, of course, of our dual being, that I should remain 
unmarried and have some mighty passion, so that 
we may arrive at the true essence of existence. Re- 
late all your experiences with the animal I denomi- 
nate a husband, especially those of the first few days, 
most faithfully. I promise I'll report everything just 
as faithfully to you, if anybody falls in love with me. 
Farewell, my poor wasted darling ! 



77 



XI 



FROM MME. DE L ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 

La Crampade. 
You make me shiver, you and your Spaniard, my 
dear love! I write these few lines to beseech you to 
dismiss him. Everything you tell me about him 
marks him as belonging to the most dangerous spe- 
cies of that class of individuals who venture every- 
thing, because they have nothing to lose. The man 
must not be your lover, and cannot be your hus- 
band. I will write more fully as to the private inci- 
dents of my marriage, but not until my heart is re- 
lieved of the anxiety with which your last letter has 
filled it. 



78 



XII 

FROM MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE 

February. 

My dear Love: At nine o'clock this morning 
my father sent word that he was waiting to see me. I 
was already up, and dressed. I found him sitting sol- 
emnly beside the fire in my dressing-room, looking far 
more pensive than is his wont. He pointed to the 
arm-chair facing him. I understood him at once, 
dropped myself into it with a gravity which aped his 
own so thoroughly that he began to smile, though 
there was something serious and melancholy even 
about his smile. 

" You're as clever as your grandmother, at all 
events," he said. 

" Come, father," I replied, " pray don't play the 
courtier here. You have something to ask of me." 

He rose to his feet in great agitation, and talked 
to me for a full half hour. That conversation, my 
dear, is worth preserving. As soon as he left me, I 
sat down to my table and tried to reproduce his words. 
This is the first occasion on which my father has re- 
vealed all his thoughts in my presence. He began by 
flattering me. It was anything but a foolish move on 

79 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

his part. I could not fail to be pleased with the man- 
ner in which he had understood me and appraised my 
value. 

" Armande," he said, " you have deceived me 
strangely and surprised me delightfully. When you 
first came out of your convent I took you to be a girl 
like most other girls, ignorant, with no particular 
ability — the kind of girl who is easily bought over 
with fallals and trinkets, and who never thinks se- 
riously about anything." 

" I thank you, father, in the name of youth in 
general." 

" Oh," he cried, with a sort of statesman-like ges- 
ture, "there's no such thing as youth nowadays! 
Your mind is astonishingly broad, you appreciate 
everything according to its value, you are exceedingly 
clear-sighted, you are excessively sly. People think 
you've seen nothing, when your eyes are already 
on the causes of the effects at which other folks are 
staring. You are a minister in petticoats, you are the 
only person in this house who is capable of under- 
standing me, and therefore if I want to get any sacri- 
fice out of you, the only thing for me to do is to use 
you against yourself. Therefore, I am about to ex- 
plain to you, quite frankly, the plans I had formed, 
and in which I still persist. If I am to induce you to 
adopt them, I must demonstrate to you that they 
are suggested by a noble motive. I am, therefore, 
obliged to enter with you into political considera- 
tions which are of the highest importance to the mon- 

80 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

archy and which would very likely bore any one but 
yourself. When you have listened to me, you shall 
think over the matter for a long time — I'll give you 
six months if you must have them. You are your own 
absolute mistress, and if you refuse to make the sac- 
rifice I ask of you, I shall accept your refusal, and 
give you no further trouble." 

Listening to this exordium, my dear soul, I grew 
really and truly serious, and I said: 

" Father, speak on." 

Here is what the statesman said to me: 

" My child, France is at present in a position the 
precariousness of which is known only to the King and 
to a few of the foremost intelligences in the country. 
But the King is nothing but a head without an arm. 
And the wise heads who are in the secret of this dan- 
ger have no authority over the men who must be used, 
if a successful result is to be attained. These men, 
who have been cast upon the surface by the popular 
vote, do not choose to be used as instruments. Gifted 
though they are, they still carry on the work of social 
destruction, instead of helping us to strengthen and 
steady the edifice. In a word, there are only two par- 
ties left, the party of Marius and the party of Sylla. I 
fight for Sylla, and against Marius. This, roughly 
speaking, is the situation. Looking at it in detail, we 
see that the Revolution still pursues its course; it is 
implanted in the laws, it is written on the soil, it is still 
in the minds of men; it is all the more formidable be- 
cause the majority of the councillors about the throne, 
6 81 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

seeing the Revolution has neither soldiers nor money 
at command, believe it therefore vanquished. The 
King has a great intelligence, he perceives everything 
clearly enough. But he is more and more influenced, 
every day, by his brother's party, who are all inclined 
to go too fast. He has not two years to live, and he 
is laying his plans so that he may die in peace. Do 
you know, my child, which act of the Revolution has 
worked the most destruction? You would never 
guess it. When the Revolution beheaded Louis XVI 
it beheaded the father of every family in France. 
There is no family nowadays, there is nothing but a 
horde of individuals. When Frenchmen insisted upon 
becoming a nation, they lost their chance of being an 
empire. When they proclaimed the right of equal 
succession to the paternal property they killed the 
family spirit, and they created the Exchequer. But 
they paved the way for the weakening of all superior 
forces, and for the advent of the blind rule of 
the mob, for the extinction of art and the supremacy 
of personal interest, and they opened the road to 
foreign conquest. We find ourselves between two 
systems. We must constitute the State either by 
means of the family, or else by means of personal in- 
terest. Democracy or aristocracy, discussion or 
obedience, Catholicism or religious indifference — 
there, in a few words, lies the question. I belong to 
that small party which desires to resist what is called 
1 the people ' — in its own interests, of course. This is 
no longer a question of feudal rights, as the simple- 

82 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

minded are told, nor of aristocratic privilege. The 
matter affects the State, it affects the very life of 
France. No country which is not grounded in pa- 
ternal power has any sure existence. There begins 
the ladder of responsibility and of subordination, 
which rises up to the King himself. The King stands 
for every one of us. To die for the King is to die for 
one's self, for one's family, which itself never dies, any 
more than does the monarchy. Every animal has its 
own instinct; the human instinct is the family spirit. 
A nation is a strong nation when it is composed of 
rich families, every member of which is interested in 
the defence of the common treasure, whether it be 
in money, glory, privilege, or enjoyment. A nation is 
weak when it is composed of individuals who have no 
community of interest, who care little whether they 
are ruled by seven men or one, by a Russian or a Cor- 
sican, so long as each man keeps his own field — and 
not one of the poor selfish wretches perceive that 
some of these days his field will be taken from him. 
We are tending towards a state of things which will 
become horrible, if any misfortune should overtake us. 
Nothing will be left us but penal laws, or fiscal laws — 
your money or your life. The most generous nation 
upon the face of the earth will cease to be influenced 
by feeling. Incurable sores will have been developed 
and fostered in its nature. Universal jealousy, in the 
first place. The upper classes will be all commingled, 
parity of desire will be taken for equality of capacity, 
the really superior men, who were formerly recognised 

83 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and proved as such, will be engulfed in the floods of 
the ' bourgeoisie.' There was some chance of choosing 
out one good man among a thousand. It will never be 
possible to find anything among three million, all 
nursing the same ambition and garbed in the same 
livery — that of mediocrity. This triumphant horde 
will not perceive that over against it will be ranged 
another and a redoubtable mob — that of the peasant 
proprietors. Twenty millions of acres, all living and 
moving and arguing, listening to nothing, ever ask- 
ing for more, standing in the way of everything, with 
a whole force of brute power at its command." 

" But," said I, interrupting my father, " what can 
I do for the State? I don't feel the smallest inclina- 
tion to play Jeanne d'Arc for the family idea, and per- 
ish at the convent stake." 

" You're a mischievous little wretch," said my 
father. " If I talk sense to you, you give me jokes, 
and when I jest, you talk to me as if you were an 
ambassador." 

" Love lives on contrasts," quoth I. 

And he laughed till he cried. 

" You'll think over what I have just explained to 
you. You will notice how I prove my confidence and 
how honourably I treat you by speaking to you as I 
have spoken, and it may be that events will serve my 
plans. I know that, so far as you are concerned, 
these same plans are offensive and even iniquitous. 
And, indeed, it is less from your heart and your imag- 
ination than from your good sense that I hope for 

84 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

sanction. I have noticed more reason and good sense 
in you than I have seen in any other person." 

" When you say that you praise yourself," I said 
with a smile, " for I really am your daughter." 

" Well, well," he said, " I could not be inconsist- 
ent. The end justifies the means, and we have to set 
an example to every one else. Therefore you must 
not have any fortune until that of your younger 
brother is secured, and I desire to use all your capital 
to entail an income on him." 

" But," I resumed, " you do not forbid me to live 
as I choose, and find my own happiness, if I leave my 
fortune to you? " 

" Ah," he replied, " so long as the life you desire 
does no prejudice to the honour, the dignity and, I 
may add, the glory of your family! " 

" Why," I exclaimed, " you're stripping me very 
promptly of that remarkable good sense of mine! " 

" Nowhere in all France," said he bitterly, " shall 
we find a man who will marry a portionless girl of the 
highest birth and settle a fortune on her. If such a 
husband were to offer himself he would belong to the 
parvenu class. With regard to that point my ideas are 
those of the eleventh century." 

" And mine, too," I answered. " But why do 
you dishearten me? Are there no old peers of 
France? " 

:c You're mighty advanced, Louise," he cried. 
Then, with a smile, he kissed my hand and left me. 

I had received your letter that very morning, and 
85 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

it had just made me think of that very abyss into 
which you declare I may possibly fall. A voice within 
me seemed to cry: " You will fall into it!" I had 
therefore taken my precautions. Henarez does 
dare to look at me, my dear, and his eyes disturb me. 
They give me a sensation which I can only compare to 
one of profound terror. One oughtn't to look at that 
man any more than at a toad. Like it, he is hideous 
and fascinating. For the last two days I have been 
debating whether I wouldn't tell my father simply 
that I didn't choose to learn Spanish and have Hena- 
rez dismissed. But after all my bold resolutions I fear 
I want to be stirred by the horrible sensation I have 
when I see the man, and I say: " Just once more and 
then I'll speak." My dear, there's something most 
penetrating and sweet about his voice, his speech is 
like Fodor's singing. His manners are simple, with- 
out the slightest affectation, and what teeth! Just 
now, as he was about to leave me, he thought he no- 
ticed the interest that I take in him, and he made 
a gesture, most respectfully indeed, as if he would 
have taken my hand to kiss it. But he checked 
himself, as though startled by his own boldness and 
the gulf he would have crossed. Slight as the move- 
ment was I guessed its meaning. I smiled, for nothing 
is more touching than to see the impulse of an inferior 
nature which thus retires within itself. There is so 
much audacity in the love of a bourgeois for a high- 
born girl. My smile gave him courage; the poor man 
began looking for his hat without seeing it. He 

86 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

didn't want to find it, and I brought it to him very 
gravely. His eyes were wet with unshed tears. That 
short moment held a world of things — and thoughts. 
So well did we understand each other, that I held out 
my hand for him to kiss. Perhaps that told him love 
might bridge the abyss between us. Well, I don't 
know what moved me to do it. Griffiths had turned 
her back to us. I stretched out my white hand to 
him haughtily, and I felt the heat of his burning lips 
tempered by two great tears. 

Ah, dearest angel, I sat on there, exhausted, in 
my arm-chair, thinking. I was happy, and I can't 
possibly explain how or why. What I felt was poetry. 
My condescension, of which I am ashamed now, 
seemed to me something noble. He had bewitched 
me — there's my excuse! 

Friday, 

The man really is very good-looking! His speech 
is cultured, his intelligence is remarkably superior. 
My dear, his explanation of the structure not only of 
the Spanish language, but of every other, and of hu- 
man thought, is as masterly and as logical as though he 
were Bossuet himself. French seems to be his mother- 
tongue. When I expressed my surprise at this, he 
answered that when he was very young he had been 
brought to France, to Valencay, with the King of 
Spain. What change has taken place within this man's 
soul? He is quite altered; he came to me simply 
dressed, but looking exactly like some great gentle- 
man out for his morning walk. All through the lesson 

87 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

his intellect flashed like a beacon, he displayed all his 
eloquence. Like some tired being whose strength 
had come back to him, he disclosed to me the inmost 
feelings he had so carefully hidden hitherto. He told 
me the story of a poor wretch of a serving-man who 
had let himself be killed for the sake of one glance 
from a Queen of Spain. 

" All he could do was to die/' I said. 

This answer filled his heart with joy, and the look 
in his eyes absolutely terrified me. 

That night I went to a ball given by the Duchesse 
de Lenoncourt. The Prince de Talleyrand was there. 
I made a charming young fellow, a M. de Vande- 
nesse, ask him whether any one of the name of He- 
narez had been among the guests at his country- 
place in 1809. He answered: 

" Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family, 
which claims descent from Abencerrages, who em- 
braced Christianity. The old Duke and his two sons 
accompanied the King. The eldest son, the present 
Duque de Soria, has just been stripped of all his pos- 
sessions, honours, and grandeeships by King Ferdi- 
nand, who thus wreaks an old-standing spite. The 
Duke made a huge mistake when he undertook to 
serve as Constitutional Minister with Valdez. Luck- 
ily, he escaped from Cadiz before the Due d'Angou- 
leme arrived, for in spite of all his good-will, the Duke 
would not have been able to save him from the King's 
fury." 

This answer, which the Vicomte de Vandenesse 
88 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

carried back to me word for word, gave me much food 
for reflection. 

I cannot describe the anxiety in which I spent the 
time until my next lesson, which took place this 
morning. During the first fifteen minutes of this 
lesson I kept asking myself, as I watched him, whether 
he was a Duke or a bourgeois, without being able to 
make anything of it. He seemed to guess my 
thoughts as fast as they came into being, and to take 
delight in misleading them. At last I could bear it no 
longer. I suddenly put aside my book, and breaking 
off the translation I had been making, I said to him, in 
Spanish: 

" You are deceiving us, sir. You are no poor 
liberal citizen; you are the Duque de Soria! " 

" Mademoiselle," he answered, with a melancholy 
gesture, " unhappily I am not the Duque de Soria." 

I understood all the despair he put into that word 
" unhappily." Ah, my dear, I am certain no other 
man will ever be able to impart so much passion and 
expression to a single word. He had dropped his eyes 
and dared not look at me again. 

" M. de Talleyrand," I said, " in whose house you 
spent your years of exile, admits of no alternative 
for a Henarez, between being Duque de Soria in dis- 
grace, or a servant." 

He lifted up his eyes and showed me two black, 
shining furnaces, orbs that blazed and yet were filled 
with humiliation. At that moment the man seemed 
to me to be on the rack. 

89 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

" My father," he said, " was, indeed, the servant of 
the King of Spain." 

Griffiths could not comprehend this method of 
study; there were alarming silences between each 
question and answer. 

" Well," I said, " are you a nobleman or a bour- 
geois? " 

" You know, Senorita, that in Spain even the beg- 
gar is nobly born." 

This reserve nettled me. Since the previous 
lesson I had prepared myself one of those entertain- 
ments which appeal to the imagination. I had written 
a letter in which I had formulated the ideal portrait of 
the man whom I should choose to be my lover, and I 
intended to ask him to translate it. Up to the present, 
I had been translating from Spanish into French, not 
from French into Spanish. I mentioned this fact to 
him, and then I asked Griffiths to fetch me the last 
letter I had received from one of my girl friends. 

" By the effect my programme produces upon 
him," thought I to myself, " I shall find out what 
blood runs in his veins." 

Taking the paper from Griffiths's hands, I said: 
" Let me see if I have copied it properly " — for it was 
all in my own handwriting. Then I laid the sheet, or 
if you choose, the snare, in front of him, and I watched 
him while he read. 

" The man I could love, my dear, must be un- 
bending and haughty with other men, but gentle with 
all women. His eagle glance will instantly quell 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

anything that approaches ridicule. He will have a 
smile of pity for those who would joke at sacred 
things, more especially those things which constitute 
the poetry of the soul, and without which life would 
be nothing but a dreary reality. I have the deepest 
scorn for those who would cut us off from the spring 
of those religious sentiments which are so rich in con- 
solation, and therefore his faith must have all the sim- 
plicity of a child's, together with the unalterable con- 
viction of an intelligent man who has searched out the 
grounds of his belief. His mind, fresh and original, 
must be free from affectation and love of display. He 
will never say anything too much, nor anything inap- 
propriate. It would be as impossible to him to weary 
others as to be weary with himself, for he will carry a 
wealth of interest within him. All his thoughts must 
be noble, high, chivalrous, without a touch of selfish- 
ness. Everything he does will be marked by a total 
absence of calculation or self-interest. His faults will 
spring from the very breadth of his ideas, which will be 
above those of his time. In every point I should de- 
sire to find him in advance of his epoch. Full of the 
delicate kindness due to all weak creatures, he will be 
good to every woman, but very slow to fall in love 
with any. He will consider that matter as one far too 
serious to permit of its being played with. Thus he 
might possibly spend his whole life without really lov- 
ing any woman, although himself possessing all the 
qualities which should inspire the deepest passion. 
But if he should once meet with his ideal woman — the 

9i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

woman seen in those dreams a man dreams open- 
eyed — if he should find a being who will understand 
him, who will fill his heart, and cast a ray of glad- 
ness over all his life, and shine on him like a star 
athwart the clouds of the dark, chill, frozen world, 
who will impart an utterly new charm to his existence 
and strike chords within his being which have hitherto 
lain silent — be very sure that he will recognise and 
value his good fortune. And further, he will make that 
woman perfectly happy. Never, either by word or 
look, will he grieve the loving heart which will have 
committed itself to his care with the blind confidence 
of the child that slumbers in its mother's arms. For 
if this sweet dream of hers were to be broken, her heart 
and her whole being would be torn in twain forever. 
It never would be possible for her to embark upon 
that ocean without risking her whole future on the 
hazard. 

" This man will necessarily possess the physiog- 
nomy, the appearance, the deportment and, in a word, 
the manner of doing things, small and great, peculiar 
to persons of a superior stamp, who are all simple and 
unpretending. His face may be ugly, but his hands 
beautiful. A faint smile, ironic and scornful, will 
curve his upper lip at the sight of those for whom 
he cares not, but on those he loves he will shed the 
bright and heavenly beam of a glance expressive of 
the soul within." 

" Senorita," he said, in Spanish, and in a voice 
that shook with emotion, " will you allow me to keep 

92 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

this paper in memory of you? This lesson is the last 
I shall have the honour of giving you, and the teach- 
ings of this written sheet may become a rule of con- 
duct to all eternity. I left Spain as a penniless fugi- 
tive, but my family has now remitted me a sum of 
money sufficient for my needs — I shall have the 
honour of sending some Spaniard to fill my place 
here." 

It was as though he said to me, " The play is 
over." He rose to his feet with a gesture that had a 
wonderful dignity about it, and left me overwhelmed 
by the astounding delicacy peculiar to men of his 
class. He went downstairs and sent in to ask if he 
could speak to my father. 

While we were at dinner my father said to me, 
with a smile: 

" Louise, you have been taking Spanish lessons 
from a man who was formerly Minister to the King of 
Spain, and who has been sentenced to death." 

" The Duque de Soria," said I. 

" Duke! " replied my father; " he's that no longer. 
He now takes the title of Baron de Macumer, from a 
fief he still holds in Sardinia. He strikes me as being 
rather an oddity." 

" Don't dishonour a man who is your equal, and 
who, I believe, has a noble heart, by applying to him a 
word which, as you use it, always implies derision and 
disdain." 

" Baroness de Macumer!" exclaimed my father, 
with a mocking look. 

93 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Instinctively I dropped my eyes. 

" Why," said my mother, " Henarez must have 
met the Spanish Ambassador upon the doorstep." 

" Yes," replied my father, " the Ambassador 
asked me whether I was conspiring against the 
King, his master, but he greeted the grandee of 
Spain with deep respect, and placed himself at his 
disposal." 

All this, dear Mme. de l'Estorade, happened a fort- 
night ago, and for a whole fortnight I have not seen 
this man, who loves me — for the man does love me! 
What is he doing with himself? I wish I were a fly, 
or a mouse, or a sparrow. I wish I could see him 
alone, where he lives, without his seeing me. There 
is a man to whom I can say, " Go and die for me! " 
and he is capable of going — at least I think so. At 
last there is a man in Paris round whom my thoughts 
hover, and whose glance fills my innermost soul with 
brightness. Oh, but this is an enemy whom I must 
trample under foot ! What ! can there be a man with- 
out whom I cannot live, who is necessary to my exist- 
ence? You are married, and I'm in love. Only four 
months, and these two turtle-doves who had soared so 
high have fallen down into the slough of reality! 

Sunday. 
Yesterday at the Italiens I felt somebody was look- 
ing at me. My eyes were drawn as by magic towards 
two shining orbs that blazed like two jewels out of a 
dark corner of the orchestra. Henarez never took his 

94 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

eyes off me; the wretch has sought out the only place 
in the theatre whence he could see me, and there 
he is established! I don't know what his political 
powers may be, but in love-making he is a genius. 

H Voila, belle Renee, a quel point nous en som- 
mes," as the great Corneille says. 



95 



XIII 

FROM MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 

La Crampade, February. 

I was obliged to wait a little before writing to 
you, my dear Louise, but now I know, or I should 
rather say, I have learned, many things, and for the 
sake of your future happiness I must make them 
known to you. The difference between a young girl 
and a married woman is so great, that the girl is no 
more capable of conceiving it, than a married woman is 
capable of becoming a girl again. I preferred marrying 
Louis de l'Estorade to going back to the convent. 
That much is quite clear. After I had once guessed 
that if I did not marry Louis I should have to go 
back to my convent, I was obliged, in young girl's 
parlance, " to make up my mind to it." My mind 
once " made up," I set to work to consider my posi- 
tion, so as to turn it to the best possible account. 

To begin with, the seriousness of the undertaking 
filled me with terror. Marriage is a matter of one's 
whole life; love is a matter of pleasure. But, then, 
marriage still endures after pleasure has passed away, 
and it gives birth to interests far dearer than those of 
the man and woman it binds together. It may be, 

9 6 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

then, that the only thing necessary to a happy mar- 
riage is that sort of friendship which, for the sake of 
the sweetness it brings, overlooks many a human im- 
perfection. There was nothing to prevent my feel- 
ing affection for Louis de l'Estorade. Once I re- 
solved never to seek in marriage those passionate de- 
lights on which we used to dwell so much and with 
such dangerous enthusiasm, I felt a sense of the sweet- 
est calm within me. " If I cannot have love, why 
should I not seek for happiness? " said I to myself, 
" and besides, I am loved, and I will permit myself to 
be loved. There will be no servitude about my mar- 
riage, it will be a perpetual rule. What disadvantage 
can this state of things present to a woman who as- 
pires to be absolute mistress of herself? " 

This important point of being married, and yet 
not married, was settled in a conversation between 
Louis and myself, during which the excellence of his 
character and the goodness of his heart were both re- 
vealed to me. I greatly desired, my darling, to pro- 
long that fair season of love and hope which, inas- 
much as it involves no active enjoyment, leaves the 
virginity of the soul untouched. To grant nothing as 
a duty or in obedience to a law, to be a free agent, to 
preserve my own free-will — how sweet and noble that 
would be! A compact of this nature — one quite op- 
posed to that of the law and even that of the sacra- 
ment — could only be arrived at between Louis and 
myself. This difficulty, the first on my horizon, was 
the only one that delayed the celebration of my mar- 
7 97 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

riage. Although from the very outset I had been de- 
termined to accept everything rather than go back to 
the convent, it is in our nature to ask for the greater 
advantage after we have obtained the least. And you 
and I, dear creature, are the sort of women who want 
everything. I kept watching my Louis out of the 
corner of my eye, saying to myself, Has misfortune 
made his heart good, or bad? By dint of study I dis- 
covered that his love for me amounted to a downright 
passion. Once I had obtained the status of an idol, 
when I saw him turn pale and tremble if I even glanced 
coldly at him, I realized that I might venture on any- 
thing. Of course I carried him off, far from the old 
people, to take long walks, during which I searched 
out his heart in the most prudent fashion. I made 
him talk; I made him tell me his ideas, his plans, his 
thoughts for our future. My questions revealed so 
much preconceived opinion, and made so direct an on- 
slaught on the weak points of that hateful life a deux, 
that Louis, as he has since told me, was terrified at 
the thought that any maiden could know so much. 
As for me, I listened to his answers, the confusion of 
which proved him one of those people whom terror 
renders helpless. I ended by perceiving that chance 
had given me an adversary, whose inferiority was deep- 
ened by the fact that he had an inkling of what you 
so proudly denominate " the greatness of my mind." 
Broken down by suffering and misfortune, he looked 
upon himself as something not far from a wreck, and 
was torn by hideous fears. To begin with, he is thirty- 

9 8 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

seven and I am seventeen, and he could not survey the 
twenty years between us without alarm. Then, as 
you and I have agreed, I am very beautiful, and 
Louis, who shares our opinion on this subject, could 
not realize how sorely suffering had robbed him of his 
youth without a sensation of bitter regret. Finally, 
he felt that I, as a woman, was much superior to him- 
self as a man. These three patent items of inferiority 
had undermined his confidence in himself. He feared 
he might not make me happy, and believed I had ac- 
cepted him to avoid a worse fate. One evening he 
said shyly, that but for my dread of the convent I 
would not have married him. 

" That is true," I answered gravely. 

My dear friend, he made me feel the first throb 
of emotion with which a man can inspire us women. 
My very heart was wrung by the two great tears that 
rose to his eyes. 

" Louis," I went on consolingly, " it rests with 
you to turn this marriage of convenience into a mar- 
riage to which I could give my full consent. What I 
am going to ask of you demands a much greater sac- 
rifice on your part than the so-called ' servitude of 
love ' — when that is sincere. Can you rise to the 
level of friendship, as I understand it? A man has 
only one real friend in his life, and I would be that 
friend to you. Friendship is the bond between twin 
souls, one in their strength, and yet independent of 
each other. Let us be friends and partners, to go 
through life together. Leave me my absolute inde- 
L.ofC. 99 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

pendence. I do not forbid you to inspire me with the 
love you say you feel for me, but I do not desire to be 
your wife except of my own free-will. Make me de- 
sire to give over my free-will to you, and I will sacri- 
fice it to you that instant. You see, I do not forbid 
you to import passion into our friendship, nor to dis- 
turb it with words of love, and I, on my part, will 
strive to make our affection perfect. Above all things 
spare me the discomfort the rather peculiar position 
in which we shall find ourselves might bring upon me 
in the outer world. I do not choose to appear either 
capricious or prudish, for I am neither, and I believe 
you to be so thorough a gentleman that I hereby 
offer to keep up the outward appearance of married 
life." 

My dear, never did I see a man so delighted as 
Louis was with this proposal. His eyes began to 
shine — happiness had dried up all his tears. 

" Consider," I said, as I closed the conversation, 
" that there is nothing so very extraordinary about 
what I am asking you to do. The condition I propose 
arises out of my intense desire to possess your esteem. 
Supposing you were to owe your possession of me 
merely to the marriage service, would it be a great sat- 
isfaction to you, in later days, to reflect that your long- 
ings had been crowned by legal or religious formalities, 
and not by my free-will? Supposing that while I did 
not love you, and owing simply to that passive obedi- 
ence the duty of which my much-honoured mother 
has just impressed upon me, I should bear a child. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Do you believe that I should love that child as dearly 
as one that was born of a mutual desire? Even if it 
be not indispensable that there should be love like 
the passion of a pair of lovers between a husband and 
wife, you will surely admit, sir, that it is indispensable 
there should be no dislike. Well, we shall soon be 
placed in a very perilous position. We are to make 
our home in the country. Should we not consider 
how unstable all passion is? May not wise folk arm 
themselves against the misfortunes arising from such 
changes? " 

He was wonderfully taken aback to find me so rea- 
sonable and so full of sound reasoning, but he gave 
me his solemn promise, and thereupon I took his hand 
and squeezed it affectionately. 

We were married at the end of that week. Once 
I was sure of my freedom, I applied myself with the 
greatest cheerfulness to the dull details of all the 
various ceremonies. I was able to be my own natural 
self, and I may, indeed, have been considered what 
would have been called in the language we used at 
Blois, " a very knowing little body." Onlookers took 
a young girl, delighted with the novel and promising 
position in which she had contrived to place herself, 
for a notable woman of the world. My dear soul, I 
had beheld, as in a vision, all the difficulties of my fu- 
ture life, and I was sincerely bent on making this man 
happy. Now, in the solitude in which we are to 
live, if the woman does not rule, the marriage state 
must soon become unendurable. The woman in such 

IOI 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

a case should possess all the charms of the mistress 
and all the good qualities of the wife. Does not the 
uncertainty which hangs about enjoyment prolong 
the illusion and perpetuate those flattering delights 
to which every human creature clings, and so rightly 
clings? Conjugal love, as I understand it, drapes 
the woman in a robe of hope, endues her with sover- 
eign power, inspires her with exhaustless strength and 
with a vivifying warmth which causes everything 
about her to blossom. The more completely she is 
mistress of herself, the more certain she is to bring 
love and happiness into being. But I have specially 
insisted that all our private arrangements shall be 
veiled in the deepest mystery. The man who is sub- 
jugated by his wife is deservedly covered with ridicule. 
A woman's influence must be altogether secret. In 
our sex, charm and mystery are synonymous in all 
things. Though I set myself to raise up this crushed 
nature and bring back their lustre to the good quali- 
ties I have discovered in it, I intend it all to seem the 
spontaneous growth of Louis's character. This is 
the task, a not ignoble one, I have set before me. 
The glory of it may well suffice a woman. I am 
almost proud in my possession of a secret that 
fills my life, a plan which shall absorb all my efforts, 
which shall be hidden from every one, save yourself 
and God. 

Now I am nearly happy, and perhaps I should not 
be altogether so, if I could not tell all I feel to one 
loving heart. For how can I say it to him? My hap- 

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piness would wound him, I have been obliged to hide 
it from him. My dear, he is as delicate in feeling as 
any woman, like all men who have suffered acutely. 
For three months we lived just as we had lived before 
we married. As you will easily believe, I studied num- 
berless little personal questions which have much 
more to do with love than any one would believe. In 
spite of my coldness, his heart unfolded as he grew 
bolder. I saw the expression of his face change and 
grow younger — the refinement I introduced into the 
household began to be reflected in his person. Grad- 
ually I grew accustomed to him, I made him my 
second self. By dint of looking at him, I discovered 
the agreement between his nature and his physiog- 
nomy. The " animal we call a husband," as you ex- 
press it, disappeared from sight. One balmy evening 
I perceived a lover whose words touched my very 
heart, and on whose arm I leant with an unspeakable 
delight. And, last of all — to be as truthful with you as 
I would be with God, whom no man can deceive — 
curiosity, stirred, it may be, by the admirable faithful- 
ness with which he kept his oath, rose up within my 
heart. Horribly ashamed, I fought against myself. 
Alas! when dignity is the only thing that holds one 
back, the intellect soon pitches on some compromise. 
All then was secret, as though we had been lovers, 
and secret it must remain between us two. When 
your own marriage comes, you will applaud my discre- 
tion. Yet nothing, be sure, was lacking that the most 
exquisite passion could desire, nor the unexpected- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ness, which is, in a manner, the glory of that special 
moment. The mysterious charm for which our imag- 
ination longs, the impulse which is our excuse, the 
half-extorted consent, the ideal delights over which 
we have dimly dreamt, and which overwhelmed our 
being before we yield to their reality, every one of 
these seductions, in all their most enchanting forms, 
was there. 

I will confess to you that in spite of all these 
glories I have once more stipulated for my freedom, 
and I will not tell you all my reasons for so doing. 
You will certainly be the only creature upon whom 
even this half confidence shall be bestowed. The 
woman who gives herself to her husband, whether he 
adores her or not, would, I think, act very foolishly 
were she not to conceal her feelings and her personal 
judgment concerning marriage. The sole delight I 
have known, and it has been a heavenly joy, comes 
from the certainty that I have restored life to that 
poor fellow, before I give life to his children. Louis 
has recovered his youth, his strength, and his spirits. 
He is a different man. Like some fairy, I have wiped 
out the very memory of his misfortunes. I have meta- 
morphosed him; he has become a charming fellow. 
Now that he is sure I care for him, he displays his 
mental powers and constantly reveals fresh qualities. 
To be the constant spring of a man's happiness — 
when that man knows it, and mingles gratitude with 
his love — ah, my dear, this certainly develops a force 
within the soul far surpassing that of the most absorb- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ing passion. This force, impetuous and lasting, uni- 
form yet varied, evolves the family — that splendid 
work of womanhood which I can realize now in all its 
fruitful duty. The old father is not stingy any more. 
He gives everything I ask, unquestioningly. The 
servants are light-hearted; it seems as though Louis's 
happiness were reflected over the whole of this house- 
hold which I rule by love. The old man has brought 
himself into harmony with all the improvements. He 
would not let himself be a blot upon my dainty ar- 
rangements. To please me, he has assumed the dress, 
and with the dress, the habits of the present day. We 
have English horses, we have a brougham, a barouche 
and a tilbury. Our servants are simply but carefully 
turned out, and we have the reputation of being 
spendthrifts. I apply my wits (joking apart) to keep- 
ing my house economically and giving the greatest 
possible amount of enjoyment for the smallest possi- 
ble expenditure. I have already shown Louis how 
necessary it is for him to build roads, so as to gain a 
reputation of a man who takes an interest in the wel- 
fare of his neighbourhood. I am making him fill up 
the gaps in his education. I hope soon, by the influ- 
ence of my family and his mother's, to see him elected 
to the Conseil General of his department. I have 
told him quite frankly that I am ambitious, and that 
I do not think it at all a bad thing that his father 
should continue to look after our property and save 
money, because I want him to apply his whole mind 
to politics; that if we have children I desire to see 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

them all comfortable and well provided for under 
Government; that under pain of losing my regard 
and affection, he must become Deputy for this de- 
partment at the next election; that my family will 
back up his candidature, and that we shall then have 
the pleasure of spending all our winters in Paris. Ah, 
my angel, the fervour of his obedience showed me 
how deeply I was loved! And, to conclude, he wrote 
me this letter yesterday from Marseilles, whither he 
has gone for a few hours: 

" When you gave me leave to love you, my gentle 
Renee, I believed in happiness. But now I see no end 
to it. The past is nothing but a vague memory, a 
shadow, the necessary background to the brightness 
of my felicity. The transports of my love are so in- 
toxicating, when I am near you, that they deprive me 
of power of expressing it. All I can do is to admire 
and worship you. It is only when I am far away that 
words come back to me. You are perfectly beautiful, 
and with a beauty so grave, so majestic, that time 
will scarcely change it. And though the love be- 
tween man and wife depends not so much on beauty 
as on feeling (and how exquisite is yours!), let me 
tell you that this certainty that you will always be 
beautiful gives me a joy that deepens with every 
glance I cast upon you. The harmonious and digni- 
fied lines of your noble face show that there is some- 
thing ineffably pure under the warm colour of the 
skin. 

" The radiance of your dark eyes and the bold out- 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

lines of your brow reveal how lofty are your virtues, 
how steadfast your loyalty, how strong your heart to 
face the storms of life, if they should burst upon us. 
Nobility is your distinctive quality. I am not so vain 
as to think I am the first to tell you this, but I write 
the words so that you may clearly know I realize the 
full value of the treasure I possess. The little you 
may grant me will always make my happiness — a long 
time hence, even as now. For I feel all the grandeur 
of our mutual promise to preserve our freedom. We 
shall never owe any token of tenderness to anything 
but our own will. We shall be free, in spite of the 
closest chains. I shall be all the prouder of winning 
you afresh, now that I know the value you set upon 
that conquest. Never will you be able to speak, or 
breathe, or act, or think without increasing my admi- 
ration for your physical charms and mental graces! 
There is a something in you, I scarce know what, a 
something divine, wise, enchanting, which reconciles 
reason, honour, pleasure, and hope, and gives love 
a horizon wider than life itself. Oh, my angel, may 
the spirit of love be faithful to me, and may the future 
be filled with that exquisite delight wherewith you 
have embellished everything about me! When will 
motherhood come to you, that I may see you rejoice 
in the fulness of your life? — that I may hear that 
sweet voice of yours and those delicate thoughts, so 
fresh and so strangely well expressed, bless the love 
which is my glory, and from which, as from a magic 
spring, I have drawn new life. Yes, I will be all you 

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desire. I will become one of the useful men of my 
country, and all the glory of my success shall be yours, 
since its sole and quickening essence lies in your satis- 
faction!" 

This, my dear, is how I am training him up. His 
style is somewhat unformed; it will be better in an- 
other year. Louis is still in his first transports. I 
await that regular and continuous sensation of happi- 
ness which must result from a well-assorted marriage, 
when the woman and the man, sure of each other and 
thoroughly acquainted, have discovered the secret 
of varying the infinite, and touching the very ground- 
work of existence with a magic spell. I have a glimpse 
of the glorious secret of truly wedded spouses, and 
I am determined to possess it fully. This coxcomb, 
you observe, fancies he is as much loved as if he 
were not my husband. So far I have not reached 
that point of material attachment which enables one 
to endure many things. Still, Louis is likeable. He 
has an exceedingly equal temper, and he does things 
of which most men would boast in very simple fashion. 
In fact, though I am not in love with him, I feel I am 
capable of growing fond of him. 

So here you perceive my dusky hair, those black 
eyes, the lashes of which, so you say, " unfold like sun- 
blinds," my imperial port, and my whole person, 
raised to the dignity of sovereign power. We shall 
see, ten years hence, my dear, whether we are not 
both of us very merry and very happy in that great 
Paris, whence I shall carry you now and then to my 

1 08 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

lovely oasis in Provence. Ah, Louise, don't risk the 
fair future that lies before us both. Don't commit the 
follies with which you threaten me. I have married 
an old young man — do you marry a young old man 
in the House of Peers! There is real sense in that 
idea of yours! 



109 



XIV 

FROM THE DUQUE DE SORIA TO THE BARON DE 
MACUMER 

Madrid. 
My dear Brother: You have not made me 
Duque de Soria for me to act otherwise than as Duque 
de Soria. If I felt that you were a wanderer and de- 
prived of the comforts which money insures in every 
place, you would make my own happiness unendurable. 
Neither Maria nor I will consent to marry until we 
know you have accepted the sum of money we have 
made over to Urraca for your use. These two millions 
are your own savings, and Maria's. Kneeling side by 
side before the same altar, we have prayed — how fer- 
vently God alone knows — for your happiness. Oh, 
my brother, surely our prayers will be granted! The 
love which you seek, and which would be the consola- 
tion of your exile, will be sent down to you from 
Heaven. Maria read your letter with tears, and you 
possess her deepest admiration. As for me, I have ac- 
cepted for our house — not for myself. The King has 
fulfilled your expectations. Ah! there was such scorn 
in the fashion in which you cast his gratification to 
him, just as a man casts prey to wild beasts, that I 
longed to avenge you by telling him how your great- 
no 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ness has abased him. The one thing I have accepted 
for myself, my dearly loved brother, is my happiness 
— is Maria. For that boon, I shall always be to you 
even as the creature at the feet of its Creator. There 
will be a day in my life, and in Maria's, as bright as 
our own happy marriage — the day on which we learn 
that your heart is appreciated, that a woman loves 
you as you deserve and desire to be loved. Never 
forget that if you live for us, we, too, live for you. 
You can write to us in perfect safety, under cover 
of the Nuncio, and sending your letters round by 
Rome. The French Ambassador in Rome will, no 
doubt, undertake to forward them to the State Sec- 
retary, Monsignor Bemboni, with whom our Leg- 
ate has probably communicated already. No other 
method would be safe. Farewell, dear despoiled 
brother, beloved exile! Be proud, at all events, of 
the bliss you have given us, even if you cannot be 
happy in it. God will surely hearken to our prayers, 
which are full of you. Fernando. 



hi 



XV 



FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L ESTORADE 

March. 
Ah, my angel, marriage teaches philosophy. . . . 
Your dear face must have been yellow with envy 
while you were writing me those terrible sentiments 
about human life and feminine duty. Do you really 
think you'll convert me to marriage by your pro- 
gramme of subterranean toil? Alack! is this whither 
our too learned reveries have led you? We left Blois, 
robed in all our innocence and armed with the sharp 
arrows of thought, and now the darts of our purely 
theoretical experience have turned against your own 
bosom. If I did not know you for the purest and most 
angelic creature upon earth, I should say that all these 
calculations of yours smacked of depravity. How, 
my dear, in the interest of this country life of yours, 
you mark out your pleasures in regular fellings. You 
treat love just as you would treat your woods. Oh, I 
would rather perish in the wild whirlwinds of my own 
heart than live in the barrenness of your learned arith- 
metic! You and I were the two wisest of the girls, be- 
cause we had given a very great deal of thought to a 
very few things. But, my child, a loveless philosophy 

112 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

or the philosophy of a sham love, is the most hideous 
of all conjugal hypocrisies. Surely now and again the 
greatest rule in the world would discover the owl of 
wisdom crouched beneath your roses — an anything 
but entertaining discovery that, and one which may 
well put the most fervent passion to flight. You are 
concocting your fate, instead of being its plaything. 
We are each of us taking a very unusual course. A 
great deal of philosophy and very little love, there's 
yours. A world of love and mighty little philosophy, 
there's mine. Jean Jacques' Julie, whom I took for a 
professor, is a mere student beside you. By all that's 
virtuous, you've taken stock of life pretty thoroughly! 
Alack, I laugh at you, and maybe it is you who are 
right! You have sacrificed your youth in a single 
day, and you have grown miserly before your time. 
Your Louis will no doubt be a happy man. If he loves 
you, and I am sure he does, he'll never discover that 
you are behaving in the interest of your family, just as 
the courtesans behave in the interests of their pockets. 
And they certainly do make men happy, if we may 
judge by the wild expenditure lavished on them. 
No doubt a clear-sighted husband might retain this 
passion for you, but would he not end by feeling 
himself relieved from any necessity for gratitude to- 
ward a woman who treats falsehood as sort of a moral 
corset, as indispensable to her existence as the other 
sort is to her body? Why, my dear, love, in my eyes, 
is the principle of every virtue, summed up into the 
image of the Divine Love. Love, like every other 
8 113 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

principle, is no matter of calculation. It is the infinite 
ether of the soul. Have you not been making an ef- 
fort to justify in your own sight the horrible position 
of a girl who is married to a man for whom she cannot 
feel anything beyond esteem? Duty — there's your 
rule and measure. But is not action spurred by ne- 
cessity the social teaching of Atheism? Is not action 
arising out of love and feeling the hidden law of 
woman? You have turned yourself into the man, and 
your Louis will find himself the woman. Ah, dearest, 
your letter has plunged me into endless meditations. 
I perceive the convent can never replace the mother 
to young girls. I beseech you, my noble dark-eyed 
angel, so pure, so haughty, so grave, so exquisite, 
think over this first outcry extorted by your letter. 
I have consoled myself by considering that even while 
I lament, love has probably overthrown all the edifice 
your arguments had built up. I shall perhaps be 
worse than you, without either reason or calculation. 
Passion is an element whose logic must be as merci- 
less as your own. 

Monday. 
Yesterday evening, just as I was going to bed, I 
went to my window to admire the sky, which was 
magnificently clear. The stars were like silver nails 
holding up a blue curtain. In the silence of the night 
I heard somebody breathing, and by the dim light of 
the stars I beheld my Spaniard perched like a squirrel 
on the branches of one of the trees on the sidewalk of 
the boulevard, no doubt gazing at my window. The 

114 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

first effect of this discovery was to send me back into 
my room, feeling as if all the strength had gone out 
of my hands and feet. But beneath this sensation of 
terror I was conscious of a most exquisite delight. I 
was crushed, and still I was happy. Not one of those 
witty French gentlemen who desire to marry me has 
had the wit to come and spend his nights in an elm 
tree and risk being caught by the watchman. My 
Spaniard, of course, had been there for some time. 
Aha! he doesn't give me lessons; he wants some one 
to give them to him. Well, he shall have them. If 
he only knew all I have said to myself about his ap- 
parent ugliness! I've talked philosophy, Renee, as 
well as you. I've considered that there would be 
something horrible about loving a handsome man. 
Isn't that to acknowledge that love, which should be 
divine, is three parts a matter of the senses? When 
I had got over my first alarm, I stretched my neck be- 
hind the window-pane to see him again, and, just like 
my luck, he blew a letter, cunningly wound round a 
good-sized bit of lead, into the window, through an 
air-gun. 

" Good heavens," said I to myself, " will he think 
I left my window open on purpose? If I shut it 
suddenly now, I shall look like his accomplice." 

I did better than that. I came back to the win- 
dow as if I had never heard the nosie of his note 
falling, as if I had not noticed anything at all, and I 
said aloud: "Do come and look at the stars, Miss 
Griffiths." 

Ii5 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Now Griffiths was sound asleep like a respectable 
old maid. When the Moor heard me he disappeared 
as swiftly as a shadow. He must have been nearly as 
dead of fright as I had been, for I never heard him 
go away, and he no doubt remained some time at 
the foot of the tree. After a full quarter of an hour, 
which I spent soaring to the blue vault of Heaven 
and swimming over the wild ocean of curiosity, I 
shut up my window and got into bed, there to un- 
fold the thin paper with all the carefulness of a re- 
storer of antique books at Naples. It burnt my fin- 
gers. " What a horrible power this man has over 
me! " said I to myself, and instantly I held the paper to 
the light, meaning to burn it unread. . . . An idea 
made me hold my hand. " What can he write to me 
in secret? " Well, my dear, I burnt the letter up, for I 
thought that though every other girl upon the earth 
would have devoured it, I, Armande Louise Marie de 
Chaulieu, ought not to read it. 

The next day he was at his post at the Italiens. 
But Constitutional Prime Minister though he may 
have been, I do not believe he read the smallest sign 
of internal agitation in my demeanour. I behaved 
absolutely as if I had neither seen nor received any- 
thing on the previous night. I was pleased with 
myself, but he was very melancholy. Poor man! in 
Spain it seems so natural that love should come in 
by the window. During the entr'acte he came and 
walked about the corridors. This was told me by the 
first Secretary of the Spanish Embassy, who also re- 

116 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

lated an action of his which really is sublime. When 
he was Duque de Soria he was to have married one of 
the richest heiresses in Spain, the young Princess 
Maria Heredia, whose wealth would have softened the 
misery of his exile. But it seems that in defiance of 
the desire of the two fathers who had betrothed them 
in their childhood, Maria loved the younger de Soria, 
and my Felipe gave up the Princess Maria when he 
allowed himself to be stripped of everything by the 
King of Spain. 

" I am sure he did that great thing very simply," 
said I to the young man. 

" Why, do you know him? " he answered art- 
lessly. 

My mother smiled. 

" What will become of him, for he is condemned to 
death? " I said. 

" Though he's dead in Spain, he has the right to 
live in Sardinia," he replied. 

"What, are there tombs in Spain, too?" I re- 
joined, so as to seem to take the thing as a joke. 

" In Spain there is everything — even Spaniards of 
the old type," answered my mother. 

" The King of Sardinia," continued the young 
diplomat, " has granted the Baron de Macumer a pass- 
port, somewhat against the grain. But, after all, he 
has become a Sardinian subject. He owns magnifi- 
cent fiefs in Sardinia, within which he has powers of 
life and death. He has a palace at Sassari. If Ferdi- 
nand VII were to die, Macumer would probably enter 

117 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the diplomatic service, and the Court of Turin, in 
spite of his youth, would give him an Embassy." 

" Ah, he is young, then? " 

' Yes, mademoiselle ... in spite of his youth, 
he is one of the most distinguished men in Spain." 

All the while the Secretary was talking I was look- 
ing about the theatre through my opera-glass and 
apparently paying him scant attention, but between 
ourselves I was in despair at having burnt that letter. 
How does such a man express himself when he is 
in love? And he does love me! To be loved and 
adored in secret, to feel that in that building, where 
all the most important folk in Paris were gathered 
together, there was one man who was my property, 
though not a soul knew it! Oh, Renee, then I un- 
derstood this Paris life with its balls and fetes! 
Everything appeared to me in its true colours. When 
one loves one needs the presence of others, if it be 
only for the sake of sacrificing them to the object of 
one's love. Within my being I felt another happy 
being. Every feeling of vanity, my pride, my self- 
love, all were flattered. God alone knows what sort 
of glance I cast upon the world about me. 

" Oh, little rogue," whispered the Duchess, smil- 
ing, in my ear. 

Yes, my crafty mother had discovered some symp- 
tom of secret delight in my attitude, and I hauled 
down my flag before that clear-sighted woman. 
Those three words of hers taught me more knowl- 
edge of the world than I had picked up in a year — 

118 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

for it is March again. Alas! in another month 
the Italicns will be closed. How are people whose 
hearts are full of love to live without that delicious 



My dear, as soon as I got home, with a resolve 
that was worthy of a Chaulieu, I opened my window 
wide to admire a shower of rain. Oh, if men only 
knew the seductive power of heroic actions over wom- 
en, they would all be very noble — the veriest cowards 
would turn into heroes. The story I had heard about 
my Spaniard had fevered my blood. I felt certain 
he was there, ready to throw me another letter. And 
this time I burnt nothing — I read it all. Here, then, 
sweet Madam Argument, is my first love-letter — we 
each have one now: 

" Louise, it is not for your splendid beauty I love 
you. It is not for your brilliant mind, your noble feel- 
ings, the infinite charm you give to every action, nor 
is it for your pride, your royal scorn of everything that 
does not belong to your own sphere — a scorn which 
does not affect your goodness, for your charity is like 
an angel's. I love you, Louise, because in all your pride 
and grandeur you have condescended to comfort a 
poor exile; because by a gesture, by a look, you con- 
soled one man for being so far below you that he 
had no claim on anything save your pity, but that 
a generous pity. You are the only woman in the 
world whose eyes have softened as they looked on 
me, and since, when I was nothing but a grain of 
dust, you cast that beneficent glance on me, and 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

thereby gave me what I never obtained, when I had 
all the power to which any subject can aspire — I 
would fain tell you, Louise, that you have grown dear 
to me, that I love you unreservedly and for your- 
self, in a measure far surpassing the conditions you 
yourself have formulated to define a perfect love. 
Know then, my idol, whom I have set in my highest 
heaven, that the world contains one scion of the Sara- 
cen race whose life is yours, whom you may com- 
mand, as though he were your slave, and whose glory 
it will be to do your will. I have given myself to 
you forever — for the mere joy of doing it — for the 
sake of one glance of yours, for the sake of the hand 
you stretched out one morning to your Spanish 
master. You have a henchman, Louise, and nothing 
more. No, I dare not think I ever can be loved, but 
perhaps I may be endured, if only for the sake of my 
devotion. Ever since that morning when you smiled 
on me, like a noble maiden who guessed the misery 
of my betrayed and solitary soul, I have enthroned 
you in my heart. You are the absolute sovereign of 
my life — the queen of all my thoughts, the goddess 
of my soul, the light that brightens my dwelling, the 
flower of all my flowers, the perfume of the air I 
breathe, the strength of my blood, the soft ray be- 
neath which I slumber. One thought alone has trou- 
bled my happiness. You dreamt not you possessed a 
limitless devotion, a faithful arm, an unquestioning 
slave, a silent servitor, a treasury — for I am nothing 
now but the depository of all I own. You knew not 

1 20 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

there was a heart to which you might confide all 
things, the heart of an aged grandparent of whom you 
might ask what you will, of a father whose protection 
you might claim, the heart of a friend, a brother — all 
these are lacking about you, as I know. I have found 
out your secret loneliness. My boldness springs now 
from my longing to make you know how much you 
do possess. Accept it all, Louise, and you will give 
me the only life that is possible for me in this world — 
a life of devotion. You run no risk when you clasp 
the slave's collar about my neck. I will never ask for 
anything save the delight of knowing I belong to you. 
Do not even tell me you will never love me. That 
must be so, I know. I must love you from afar, with- 
out hope, and for myself alone. I greatly long to 
know if you will accept my service, and I have 
searched about to discover some proof which may 
convince you there would be no loss of dignity in 
your granting this prayer of mine, seeing I have been 
your property for many a day, now, although you 
knew it not. You would give me my answer, then, 
if, some evening at the Italiens, you were to carry a 
nosegay consisting of two camellias, a white one and 
a red — the type of a man's life blood, wholly devoted 
to the service of the purity he adores. That would 
settle it all forever. Ten years hence — even as to- 
morrow — whatever you may desire that man can do 
will be performed as soon as you choose to lay your 
commands on your happy servant, 

" Felipe Henarez." 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

P. S. — My dear, you must confess that these great 
gentlemen know how to love. Isn't that the spring 
of the African lion? What restrained passion! What 
trust! What sincerity! What noble-mindedness, 
even in his humility! I felt very small, indeed, and I 
asked myself, half stunned, " What am I to do? " The 
peculiarity of a great man is that he throws all ordi- 
nary calculations out. He is sublime and touching at 
once, artless and still gigantic. In one single letter, he 
rises higher than Lovelace and Saint Preux, in a hun- 
dred. Ah, this is genuine love, with nothing petty 
about it. Love may exist or it may not, but when it 
does it must appear in all its vastness. This puts a 
stop to all my coquetting. Refusal or acceptance — I 
stand between the two, without the ghost of a pretext 
to shelter my irresolution. There's an end to all dis- 
cussion. This isn't Paris; it is Spain, or the East. It 
is the Abencerrage who speaks and kneels to the 
Catholic Eve, laying his scimitar, his horse, and his 
own head at her feet. Am I to accept this remnant of 
the Moors. Read my Spanish-Saracen letter over and 
over again, my Renee, and you'll see that love wipes 
out all the stipulations of your philosophy. Hark ye, 
Renee, your letter shocks me; you've made life look 
vulgar to me. Why should I shuffle? Am I not mis- 
tress to all eternity of this lion who has softened his 
roar to submissive and obedient sighs? Heavens, how 
he must have roared in his lair in the Rue Hillerin- 
Bertin! I know where he lives, I have his card — F. 
Baron de Macumer. He has made it impossible for me 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

to send him any answer. All I can do is to throw two 
camellias in his face. What fiendish cleverness there 
is in a real, pure, simple love ! Here, then, is the great- 
est event in the history of a woman's heart reduced to 
an easy and simple action. O Asia, I've read the 
Arabian Nights and here's their meaning — two blos- 
soms, and that ends it all! We sum up the fourteen 
volumes of Clarissa Harlowe in a posy. His letter 
makes me writhe just as a cord twists in the fire. Will 
you take those two camellias or will you not? Yes 
or no? Kill me or give me life. Then I hear a voice 
cry: "Put him to the test." And I am going to 
do it. 



123 



XVI 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

March. 
I am dressed all in white. I have white camellias 
in my hair and a white camellia in my hand. My 
mother has red camellias in hers. I can take one from 
her, if I like. I have a sort of longing to make his 
camellia cost him dearer, by dint of a little hesitation, 
and not to make up my mind till I am on the spot. I 
really look lovely. Griffiths begged me to let her 
gaze at me for a moment. The solemnity of the occa- 
sion and the dramatic nature of the consent I am 
giving have heightened my colour — each of my 
cheeks is a camellia blooming red on white. 

One o'clock in the Morni7tg. 
Every soul admired me — only one knew how to 
worship me. He dropped his head when he saw the 
white camellia in my hand, and I saw him turn as 
white as the flower after I had taken a red one from 
my mother's bouquet. To have appeared with both 
might have been an accident. But my action gave 
him a direct reply, so I enlarged my acknowledgment. 
The opera was Romeo and Juliet, and as you do not 
know the duet between the two lovers, you can't real- 
ize the bliss it was for two neophytes in love to listen 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

to that divine expression of the tender passion. As 
I went to bed I heard steps resounding on the pave- 
ment of the sidewalk. Oh, dearest, my heart is on 
fire, and my brain as well. What is he doing? What 
is he thinking about? Has he one thought, one 
single thought, to which I am a stranger? Is he the 
ever-ready slave he has declared himself to be? How 
am I to make sure of it? Has he the very slightest 
feeling that my acceptance involves a censure, a 
change of any kind, an expression of thanks? I am 
a prey to all the minute hair-splittings of the female 
character in Cyrus, and Astrea, to the subtleties of 
the Courts of Love. Does he know that where love 
is concerned, a woman's smallest actions are the out- 
come of a whole world of thought, internal struggle, 
and wasted victories? What is he thinking about? 
How am I to give him orders to write me all the 
details of the day every evening? He is my slave! 
I must give him something to do, and I mean to over- 
whelm him with labour. 

Sunday Morning. 
I only slept a very little, toward morning. It is 
midday now. I have just made Griffiths write the fol- 
lowing letter: 

"To the Baron de Macumer: Mile, de Chau- 
lieu desires me, sir, to ask you for the copy of a letter 
from one of her friends, in her own hand, which you 
have taken away with you. Believe me, etc., 

" Griffiths." 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

My dear, Griffiths put on her bonnet, she went to 
the Rue Hillerin-Bertin, she sent up this love-letter to 
my slave, and he returned me my programme, damp 
with his tears, in an envelope. He has obeyed me! 
Ah, my dear soul, it must have cost him something. 
Another man would have written me a letter crammed 
with flattery and refused. But the Saracen has been 
what he promised he would be. He has obeyed! 
This has touched me even to tears. 



126 



XVII 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

April 2d. 

Yesterday the weather was glorious. I dressed 
myself like a girl who is loved and desires to be loved. 
My father, at my request, has given me the prettiest 
turnout to be seen in Paris — two dapple-gray horses, 
and the most elegant carriage you can conceive. I 
went out in it for the first time. I looked like a flower 
under my sunshade lined with white silk. As I drove 
up the Champs-Elysees I saw my Abencerrage com- 
ing towards me on the most magnificent horse. The 
men, who are nearly all of them first-class horse- 
jockeys nowadays, were all stopping to look at him 
and watch him. He bowed to me, and I made him a 
friendly and encouraging gesture. He slackened his 
horse's pace, and I was able to say to him: 

" You will not be vexed with me, Baron, for 
having asked you to let me have my letter back. It 
was useless to you. You have outstripped that pro- 
gramme already," I added, in a low voice. Then I 
said: 

" That horse of yours attracts a great deal of at- 
tention." 

" My agent in Sardinia sent it to me out of 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

sheer pride, for this Arab horse was born in my 
maquis." 

This morning, my dear, Henarez was riding an 
English chestnut, a very fine horse, indeed, but 
which did not attract every eye. The touch of jesting 
criticism in my words had been enough for him. He 
bowed to me, and I bent my head slightly in response. 
The Due d'Angouleme has bought Macumer's 
horse. My slave understood that when he attracted 
the attention of the loungers in the street he lost 
something of the simplicity I desire for him. A man 
should be remarked on account of himself, not be- 
cause of his horse or any other thing about him. To 
have too fine a horse seems to me as absurd as to wear 
a huge diamond in your shirt-front. I was delighted 
to catch him in fault, and there may have been a touch 
of vanity such as may well be allowed a poor exile in 
what he did. All this childishness delights me. Oh, 
my aged Arguer, do my love affairs enchant you as 
much as your dreary philosophy depresses me? Dear 
Philip II in petticoats! Do you find it pleasant driv- 
ing in my carriage? Do you note that velvet glance, 
humble yet full, proud of his servitude, cast on me as 
he passes by, by that truly great man who has donned 
my livery and always wears a red camellia in his but- 
tonhole, just as I always carry a white one in my 
hand? How love clears up everything! How well 
I understand Paris! Now everything I see full of 
meaning. Yes, love is fairer here, nobler, more fas- 
cinating than in any other place. I have come to the 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

absolute conclusion that I could never tease nor dis- 
turb a fool, nor wield the slightest influence over one. 
Superior men are the only beings capable of under- 
standing us thoroughly, and on whom we can produce 
any effect. Oh, my poor dear, I forgot l'Estorade. 
But then didn't you tell me you were going to turn 
him into a genius? I know why! You're bringing 
him up tenderly, so that some day he may appreciate 
you! Good-bye. I'm rather wild, and I'd better 
not go on. 



129 



XVIII 

FROM MME. DE l'eSTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 

April. 

Sweet angel, or should I not rather say, sweet 
fiend! Without intending it, you have grieved me, 
and if we were not one in heart I should say you had 
wounded me — but does one not wound one's self some- 
times? How clear it is that you have never yet fixed 
your thoughts on that one word indissoluble as applied 
to the compact that binds the woman to the man! I 
will not attempt to gainsay philosophers and legisla- 
tors. They are surely well enough able to gainsay each 
other. But, my dearest, though marriage has been 
made irrevocable by the imposition of an unvarying 
and pitiless formula, each union is thereby rendered 
utterly different — as different as are the individuals 
bound together. Every marriage has its special pri- 
vate laws. The laws that govern a country couple, 
the members of which are to remain perpetually in 
each other's presence, are not those which govern a 
city household in which existence is more diversi- 
fied by pleasure. And the laws that rule a couple 
settled in Paris, where life roars by like a torrent, can 
never resemble those that guide a married pair in 
the provinces, where life is so infinitely quieter. While 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

conditions vary with surroundings, they vary much 
more with characters. The wife of a man of genius 
has only to permit herself to be guided; and the wife of 
a fool, unless she is prepared to face the most hideous 
misfortune, takes the reins into her own hands if she 
feels herself to be cleverer than her husband. It may 
be, after all, that argument and reason land us in what 
some would call depravity. What is this so-called 
feminine depravity but a calculation of feelings? A 
reasoning passion is a depraved thing. Passion is 
beautiful only when it is involuntary and full of those 
noble outbursts in which selfishness has no place. 
Ah, sooner or later, my dear, you'll say to yourself: 
" Yes, deception is as necessary to every woman as her 
corset — that is, if deception means the silence of the 
woman who has courage to hold her peace — if decep- 
tion means the calculation on which our future hap- 
piness necessarily depends." At her own cost, every 
woman must learn the social law, a law incompatible 
in many respects with the law of Nature. Women 
marrying at our age may bear a dozen lawful children, 
but if we were to bear them we should commit a dozen 
crimes, we should engender a dozen miseries — for 
should we not doom twelve beloved beings to pov- 
erty and despair? Whereas two children are two joys, 
two blessings, two creations that harmonize with our 
existing laws and customs. The natural law and the 
Code are at war, and we ourselves are the field on 
which they fight. Would you call the wisdom of the 
wife who takes care the family shall not be brought to 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ruin through her, depravity? Whether we calculate 
once or a thousand times, all's lost in matters of the 
heart. But you'll make this hideous calculation one 
of these days, my lovely Baronne de Macumer, when 
you are the proud and happy wife of the man who 
adores you — or rather that great-minded man will save 
you from making the calculation, for he will do it him- 
self. You perceive, dear giddy creature, that we have 
studied the Code in its relations to conjugal love. 
You must know that it is only to God and to our- 
selves that we owe any account of the means we use 
for the perpetuation of happiness in the bosom of our 
households. And the deliberate calculation which 
succeeds in that is better than the unthinking love 
that brings sorrow, wrangling, and separation in its 
train. I have given painful study to the part assigned 
to the wife and mother. Yes, my dear love, some sub- 
lime deception she must practise in order to become 
the noble creature she is, when she fulfils all her 
duties. You tax me with duplicity because I desire to 
measure out Louis's knowledge of myself to him in 
daily doses. But is it not too intimate an acquaint- 
ance that brings about most separations? My object 
is to keep him very busy, to distract his thought from 
me, for the sake of his own happiness, and this desire 
has nothing in common with a calculating passion. 

The spring of love is not inexhaustible, though 
that of affection may be, and it is a great undertaking 
for any good woman to distribute her allotted por- 
tion wisely over the span of life. I will risk the 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

chance of horrifying you, and I will tell you that I 
adhere to my principles, and continue to consider my- 
self a very noble-minded and very generous person. 
Virtue, my darling, is a principle which manifests 
itself variously in various surroundings. It produces 
absolutely different effects in Provence, in Constanti- 
nople, in London, in Paris — but virtue it still re- 
mains. The tissue of each human existence is full of 
the most irregular combinations. Yet viewed from 
a certain altitude, every life looks like the rest. If I 
wanted to see Louis an unhappy man and to bring 
about a regular separation between us, I should only 
have to allow him to lead me by the nose. I have 
not, like you, had the good luck to meet with a su- 
perior being. But I may have the happiness of turn- 
ing him into one; and I summon you to meet me in 
Paris five years hence. You will be deceived yourself, 
and you'll tell me I was quite mistaken, and that M. 
de l'Estorade is by nature a remarkable man. As 
for those fair delights, those deep emotions that I 
only feel through you; as for those tarryings on bal- 
conies under starlight nights, as for the excessive 
adoration that turns us into divinities, I have known 
from the first that I must give all that up. In your 
life you blossom freely as you choose. Mine is cir- 
cumscribed, hemmed in by the walls of La Crampade 
— and you find fault with the precautions that are 
necessary, if this fragile, secret, weakly happiness of 
mine is to grow lasting, rich, and mysterious? I 
fancied I had discovered the charms of a mistress 

133 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

in my married state, and you have driven me almost 
to blush for myself. 

Which of us is right? Which wrong? It may be 
that each of us is wrong and right as well. And it 
may be, also, that society makes us pay very dear for 
our laces and our titles and our children. I have my 
red camellias, too. They are on my lips, that shed 
smiles on the two men, father and son, to whom I 
devote myself — at once their mistress and their slave. 
Still, my dearest, your last two letters have made me 
realize how much I have missed. You have taught 
me the extent of the sacrifice a married woman makes. 
I had hardly time to cast a glance at the splendid wild 
steppe over which you are careering, and I will not 
enlarge on the few tears I wiped away as I read your 
letters. But regret is not remorse, though they are 
closely akin. You tell me "marriage breeds philos- 
ophy." Ah, no! I was very sure of that, when I sat 
crying, and thought of you swept away on the torrent 
of love! But my father has given me the works of 
one of the most learned authors of these parts, one 
of Bossuet's heirs, one of those merciless reasoners 
whose pages carry conviction to their readers' souls. 
While you were reading Corinne I was reading 
Bonald, and there lies the secret of my philosophy — 
the family rose up before me in all its holiness and 
might. According to Bonald, your father was per- 
fectly right in all he said. 

Farewell, my dear imagination, my friend, you 
who are all the frolic of my life! 

134 



XIX 

FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE l'eSTORADE 

Well, well, you are the dearest of women, my 
Renee, and I am convinced now that deceit is an hon- 
est thing. Are you pleased with me? Besides, the 
man who loves us belongs to us. We have the right to 
turn him either into a fool or a man of genius, though 
between ourselves we do generally make a fool of 
him. You'll make yours into a man of genius, and 
you'll keep your own secret — two noble actions. Ah, 
if there were no Paradise, you would be properly 
hoaxed, for you are certainly devoting yourself to a 
deliberate martyrdom on earth. You want to make 
him ambitious and to keep him in love with you. 
But, child that you are, it would be quite enough to 
go on feeding his passion. Up to what point is 
calculation virtue, or virtue calculation — eh? We 
won't lose our tempers over this question, since Bo- 
nald is of the party. We are and we intend to be 
virtuous, but in spite of all your delightful knaveries 
I believe you to be less wicked at this moment than 
I am. Yes, I'm a horribly deceitful girl! I love 
Felipe, and I conceal the fact from him with the most 
infamous hypocrisy. I would like to see him leap 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

from his tree on to the top of the wall, and from the 
top of the wall on to my balcony — and if he were to do 
as I desire, I should crush him with my disdain. I am 
hideously frank, you see. What stops me? What 
mysterious power is it that prevents me from letting 
that dear Felipe know the happiness his pure, perfect, 
noble, secret, all-abounding love pours out upon me? 
Mme. de Mirbel is painting my picture, and I mean to 
give it him, my dear. A thing that surprises me more 
and more every day is the activity with which love 
inspires life. What fresh interests one finds in seasons 
and actions, and the very smallest things, and how 
delightfully past and future are confused together! 
Every verb seems to have three tenses at once. Are 
things still like this after happiness has come to one? 
Oh, answer me quickly, tell me what happiness is — 
whether it calms or whether it excites. I am in a state 
of mortal anxiety. I no longer know how to act. 
There is some force in my heart that sweeps me to- 
wards him, in spite of reason and propriety. In short, 
I understand your curiosity about Louis — now are 
you pleased? Felipe's content in the thought that he 
belongs to me, his distant love and his obedience pro- 
voke me as much as his profound respect used to ex- 
asperate me when he was only my Spanish master. I 
feel inclined to shriek out at him as he goes by: 
" Idiot, if you love my picture, what would it be if 
you knew myself ? " 

Oh, Renee, you burn all my letters, don't you? 
I'll burn all yours. If any eyes but your own were to 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

read these thoughts we pour into each other's hearts, 
I would tell Felipe to go and put them out, and kill 
a few people, so that we might be safer. 

Monday. 

Ah, Renee, can a woman fathom a man's heart? 
My father is to present your M. Bonald to me, and 
since he is so wise, I'll ask him to tell me. Would 
that I had the divine power of reading the secrets of 
all hearts. Am I still an angel in that man's sight? 
There's the whole question. 

If ever, in a gesture, a look, the accent on a word, 
I were to detect any falling off in the respect he had 
for me when he gave me Spanish lessons, I feel I should 
have strength to forget everything. " Wherefore 
these fine words and mighty resolutions? " you will 
say. Ah, here it is, my dear. My delightful father, 
who treats me as if he were an elderly Cavaliere Ser- 
vente, and I an Italian lady, has, as I told you, had my 
picture painted by Mme. de Mirbel. I have con- 
trived to have a copy made, and such a good one that 
I have been able to give it to the Duke, and send the 
original to Felipe. This I did yesterday, and these 
four lines went with it : 

" Don Felipe: In response to your absolute de- 
votion, a blind confidence is bestowed on you. Time 
will prove whether any man can rise to the height of 
nobility required." 

It is a great reward. It looks like a promise and, 
what is horrible, like an invitation. But what will 
seem still more horrible to you is that I intended the 

137 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

reward to express a promise and an invitation, with- 
out going so far as to be an offer. If in his answer 
he writes " My Louise," or even " Louise," he is lost. 



Tuesday. 

No, he's not lost. This Constitutional Minister is 
a most adorable lover. Here is his letter: 

" Every moment spent without seeing you was 
filled with the thought of you. My eyes, blind to 
all else, were fixed in meditation on your figure, 
which would never stand out swiftly enough in that 
palace of darkness, peopled with dream figures, on 
which brightness is shed by you alone. Hencefor- 
ward my eyes will feed on this wonderful ivory, this 
talisman, I may call it, for when I look at it, life stirs 
your blue eyes and the portrait instantly turns to a 
reality. My letter has been delayed by my eagerness 
to indulge in this contemplation, in the course of 
which I have been telling you all those things con- 
cerning which I am forced to hold my peace. Yes, ever 
since yesterday, shut up alone with you, I have given 
myself over, for the first time in my life, to a full, com- 
plete, and infinite happiness. If you could see your- 
self where I have set you, between the Blessed Virgin 
and God himself, you would understand the agony of 
agitation in which I have spent the night. But I 
would not offend you by speaking of this — I should 
suffer so frightfully if one glance of yours were 
stripped of the angelic kindness on which I live, that 
I crave your pardon beforehand. Ah, queen of my 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

life and of my soul, if you should be pleased to grant 
me the thousandth part of the love I bear you ! 

" The if of this ceaseless petition wrung my soul. 
I stood between belief and error, between life and 
death, between darkness and light. No criminal is 
more anguished during the decision of his fate than 
I, as I acknowledge this audacity to you. The smile 
upon your lips, which I turn back to gaze at every 
other moment, has calmed the tempest stirred by my 
terror of displeasing you. In all my life no one, not 
even my mother, has smiled upon me. The fair young 
girl who was my destined bride refused my heart and 
fell in love with my own brother. In politics my ef- 
forts met with failure. I never read aught but a 
thirst for vengeance in the eyes of my King, and from 
our youth up the enmity between us has been so deep 
that he regarded the vote whereby the Cortes called 
me to power as a deadly insult to himself. However 
steadfast a man's heart may be, some doubt will creep 
into it. And besides, I am just to myself, I know my 
own ugliness, and I comprehend how difficult it must 
be to realize the nature of the heart that beats be- 
neath an exterior such as mine. When I first saw you, 
the thought of being loved had grown to be nothing 
but a dream to me, and when I first set my heart on 
you, I understood that my affection could only be 
excused by my devotion. But as I gaze upon this 
portrait, and listen to the divine promise of that smile, 
a hope I had not dared to permit myself has sprung 
up in my soul. The gloom of doubt fights with this 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

tender dawn, and the fear of your displeasure over- 
shadows it. No, you cannot love me yet. I feel it. 
But as you test the strength, the durability, the ex- 
tent of my inexhaustible affection, you will give it 
a tiny foothold in your heart. If my ambition is an 
insult to you, you will tell me so without anger, and 
I will go back to my place. But if you will indeed try 
to love me, do not make it known without minute 
precautions to the man who had built all the happi- 
ness of his life solely on being your slave." 

My dear, when I read those last words, I fancied 
I saw him, white, as he was that night when I showed 
him by the camellia that I accepted the treasures of 
his devotion. Those submissive sentences of his were 
anything but a mere flower of lovers' rhetoric in my 
eyes, and I felt a sort of great emotion in my soul — 
the breath of happiness. 

The weather has been horrible. It has been im- 
possible for me to go to the Bois without giving rise 
to all sort of strange suspicions; for my mother, who 
often goes out in spite of the rain, has stayed at home 
alone. 

Wednesday Evening. 
I have just seen him at the Opera. My dear, he 
is quite a different man. He came to our box and was 
introduced by the Sardinian Ambassador. After he 
had read in my eyes that his boldness had not dis- 
pleased me, he seemed to me to grow suddenly shy, 
and said " Mademoiselle " to the Marquise d'Espard. 
His eyes flashed glances more brilliant than the light 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

from the chandeliers. At last he departed, like a man 
who was afraid of doing something foolish. 

" The Baron de Macumer is in love," said Mme. 
de Maufrigneuse to my mother. 

" And that's all the more extraordinary," replied 
my mother, " because he is a fallen Minister." 

I kept sufficient command of myself to look at 
Mme. d'Espard, Mme. de Maufrigneuse, and my moth- 
er with the curiosity of a person who doesn't under- 
stand a foreign language and wonders what is being 
said. But within me raged a voluptuous joy in which 
my very soul seemed steeped. There is only one word 
to express what I feel, it is rapture. Felipe's love is 
so great that I feel he is worthy to be loved. I am 
literally the principle of his existence, and I hold the 
thread of all his thoughts in my hand. Indeed — as 
we are to tell each other everything — I feel the most 
violent longing to see him break down every obstacle 
between us and beseech me to bestow myself upon 
him, so that I may discover whether this fierce love 
will grow calm and submissive again at a single glance 
from me. 

Ah, my dear, I broke off here and I am still 
trembling from head to foot. As I sat writing I 
heard a little noise outside and left my chair. Out of 
my window I saw him coming along the top of the 
wall at the risk of his life. I went to the window 
and I only made him one sign. He leapt off the wall, 
which is ten feet high; then he ran out upon the road 
until I could see him so as to show me he was unhurt. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

This consideration, just at the moment when he must 
have been half stunned by his fall, touched me so 
much that I am still crying without well knowing why. 
Poor ugly fellow! What was he coming for? What 
did he want to say to me? 

I dare not set down my thoughts, and I am going 
to bed happy, thinking of all we would say to each 
other if we were together. Farewell, my silent beauty. 
I have no time to scold you, but it is more than a 
month since I have had news of you. Is it, perhaps, 
that happiness has come to you? Can it be that 
you have lost that independence of will of which you 
were so proud, and which so nearly slipped from my 
grasp to-night? 



142 



XX 

FROM RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 

May. 

If love is the life of the world, why do austere 
philosophers eliminate it from marriage? Why does 
society make the sacrifice of woman to the family the 
chief law of its existence, thus necessarily sowing 
secret discord between every married couple? — a dis- 
cord so dangerous and so amply foreseen that special 
powers have been devised to strengthen men against 
women, who, as they feel, are able to wipe out all 
things either by the might of love or by the persist- 
ence of a hidden hate? At this moment I behold in 
the married state two warring forces, which the legis- 
lator should have brought into alliance. When will 
they be joined in one? That is what I ask myself as 
I read your letter. Ah, dearest, one letter of yours 
has overthrown that edifice built up by the great 
writer of the Aveyron, in which I had taken up my 
abode with such a sense of sweet content. These laws 
were made by old men. We women find that out. 
They have most wisely decreed that conjugal love 
which is devoid of passion does not degrade us, and 
that it is the woman's duty to yield, once the law per- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

mits the man to possess her. Their sole thought has 
been for the family, and they have followed Nature, 
whose sole object is to perpetuate the race. A while 
ago I was a living being. Now I am nothing but a 
chattel. Many a lonely tear have I gulped down — 
many a tear that I have longed to barter for a consol- 
ing smile. Why are our fates so different? A lawful 
love ennobles your whole soul. Virtue, for you, is 
bound up in enjoyment. You will not suffer except 
as you may choose. Your duty, if you marry your 
Felipe, will be found in the sweetest, the most unre- 
served of all your feelings. Our future is big with the 
answer to my cry, and I await it with most agonizing 
anxiety. 

You love and you are adored. Oh, dear one, yield 
up your whole being to that exquisite poetry of which 
we have so often dreamt. Woman's beauty, so dainty 
and so spiritualized in your person, was designed by 
God that it might charm and delight man's soul. Yes, 
my beloved, keep the secret of your love well hidden, 
and put Felipe to the subtle tests we used to invent to 
discover whether the lover of your dreams would be 
worthy of us. But make more certain that you love 
him than that he loves you. Nothing is more decep- 
tive than that mirage of the heart called into being 
by longing, desire, or faith in one's own happiness. 
You, who are the one of us two that yet remains intact, 
don't, I beseech you, risk everything on so perilous 
an adventure as an irrevocable marriage without some 
preliminary safeguard. A gesture, a word, a look 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

during one of those tete-a-tete conversations, in which 
worldly hypocrisies drop off a man's soul, will often 
shed a light over a yawning gulf. You are sufficiently 
noble-hearted of yourself to permit of your treading 
boldly in paths where other women lose their footing. 
You cannot conceive my state of anxiety. In spite 
of the distance that parts us, I see you and feel every- 
thing you feel. So don't fail to write to me and to 
tell me everything. Your letters fill my life with 
passion in the midst of this household existence of 
mine — so simple, so peaceful — as dull as a high-road 
on a sunless day. The only incidents here, my dear 
love, are the succession of bickerings with my own 
self, concerning which I will keep silence for the pres- 
ent. At some later time I will tell you of them. I 
yield, and then I retake possession of myself with a 
sort of dreary obstinacy, sometimes discouraged, 
sometimes full of hope. Perhaps I have asked more 
happiness of life than life really owes me. In our 
youth we are rather apt to insist that our own ideal 
and the real essence of things must agree. My medi- 
tations, and I ponder alone, now, sitting at the foot of 
a great rock in my pleasure-grounds, have led me to 
the conviction that love in the married state is an ac- 
cident on which one cannot found any unvarying law. 
My philosopher was right when he looked at the fam- 
ily as the only social unit, and made woman subservi- 
ent, as she has been from time immemorial, to the 
family. The solution of this great question, one that 
is almost terrible to us women-folk, depends on the 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

first child we bear. And I long to be a mother, were 
it only to give scope to the consuming activity of my 
being. 

Louis is still a pattern of the most exquisite kind- 
ness. His love is active, and my affection passive. He 
is happy. He gathers the blossoms for himself alone, 
and never gives a thought to the effort of the soil that 
brings them forth. Blessed is his self-absorption. 
Whatever it may cost me, I favor his illusions, just as 
a mother, as I conceive her, wears herself out to give 
her child a pleasure. His happiness is so deep that it 
blinds him and even casts a reflected glamour back 
upon me. My smile and my glance, both bright 
with the satisfaction born of the certainty of the 
happiness I inspire, deceive him thoroughly. And 
the affectionate epithet I use in speaking to him be- 
tween ourselves is, " My child." I await the reward 
of all this sacrifice, which will remain a secret between 
yourself and me, and God. Maternity is an undertak- 
ing on which I have staked huge hopes. So much 
does it owe me now, that I fear I may never recover 
all I have risked. It must unfold my energies, it 
must enlarge my heart, and make good many things 
by the boundless joy it brings. O Heaven, grant 
that I be not disappointed! All my future hangs on 
that, and — what a terrifying thought! — all my vir- 
tue, too. 



146 



XXI 

FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE 

June. 

Dear Married Darling: Your letter came at 
the very moment when I needed it to justify in my 
own eyes a piece of boldness I have been cogitating 
all day and all night. I am possessed with the strang- 
est longing after unknown or, if you will, forbidden 
things — a longing that alarms me and warns me that 
the laws of Society and the laws of Nature will yet 
fight a desperate battle within my soul. I know not 
whether Nature is stronger than Society in my case, 
but I catch myself planning compromises between the 
two powers. In short, to put it plainly, I pined to 
spend an hour in the dark under the lime-trees at 
the foot of our garden, talking to Felipe all alone. 
No doubt this desire is characteristic of a girl on 
whom the title of " sprightly rogue," with which my 
mother has dubbed me, and which my father has con- 
firmed, is deservedly bestowed. Nevertheless, the 
misdeed appears to me both wise and prudent. While 
I shall thereby reward Felipe for the many nights he 
has spent at the foot of my wall, I shall also find out 
what view he takes of my escapade and judge him 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

by his behaviour at such a crucial moment. If he 
treats my fault as something divine, I will make him 
my adored husband; or if he should not prove more 
respectful and more overcome than when he bows as 
he rides past me in the Champs-filysees, I will never 
look upon his face again. As far as society is con- 
cerned, I risk less by seeing my lover in this fashion 
than if I were to smile upon him in the drawing-room 
of Mme. de Maufrigneuse or the old Marquise de 
Beauseant, for there are spies all about us now, and 
Heaven alone knows what strange looks are cast at 
a girl who is suspected of bestowing her attention 
on a monster such as Macumer. Oh, if you only knew 
the tumult within me, as I dream over this plan of 
mine, and if you could realize how I have striven to 
discover how it was to be carried out! I have often 
longed for you. We would have spent many a pleas- 
ant hour chattering to each other, lost in the laby- 
rinths of doubt and enjoying the foretaste of all the 
good things, or the bad, that may come of a first lovers' 
meeting after nightfall in the shadow and silence 
under the beautiful lime-trees of the Hotel de Chau- 
lieu, athwart whose branches the moon casts a thou- 
sand shafts of tender light. I fairly panted as I sat 
alone, saying to myself, " Ah, Renee, where are 
you? " Well, your letter fired the train, and my last 
scruples were blown to atoms. Out of my window 
I cast to my astounded worshipper a careful drawing 
of the key that opens the small door at the end of 
the garden, and with it the following note: "You 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

must be prevented from doing mad things. If you 
were to break your neck, you would destroy the repu- 
tation of the person you claim to love. Are you 
worthy of a fresh proof of esteem, and do you deserve 
an interview at the hour when the moon leaves the 
lime-trees at the foot of the garden in deep shad- 
ows? " 

At one o'clock yesterday morning, just as Griffiths 
was departing to her bed, I said to her: 

" Put on your shawl and come with me, my dear. 
I want to go to the end of the garden, and nobody 
must know it." 

She didn't say a word, and followed me. What a 
sensation, my Renee! For after watching with a de- 
licious feeling of anxiety for his arrival, I had seen 
him slip in like a shadow. We reached the garden 
unhindered, and then I said to Griffiths: 

" Don't be astonished. The Baron de Macumer is 
over there, and it is on his account that I have brought 
you with me." 

She didn't speak. 

" What do you want with me? " said Felipe to 
me, in a voice that told me the rustle of our gowns in 
the stillness and the noise of our steps on the gravel, 
slight as they were, had almost driven him wild 
with emotion. " I want to tell you what I cannot 
well write," I answered. Griffiths moved a dozen 
paces away from me. It was one of those soft nights 
when the air is laden with the scent of flowers. I felt 
a sort of intoxication of delight at finding myself thus 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

almost alone with him, in the soft shadow of the lime- 
trees, beyond which the garden shone all the brighter 
because the moonlight gleamed from the white facade 
of the house. The contrast was a dim image of the 
mystery of our love, destined to end in the garish 
publicity of marriage. After enjoying for a moment 
the delight of a position which was new to each of us, 
and equally surprised us both, I recovered the use of 
my tongue. 

" Though slander does not terrify me," I said, " I 
do not wish you to go on climbing that tree " (point- 
ing to the elm), " nor yet that wall. You and I have 
behaved like school children long enough. Let us 
lift our minds now to the level of our destiny. If you 
had been killed by your fall, I should have died dis- 
honored." 

I looked at him; his face was ghastly white. 

" And if any one saw you thus, suspicion would fall 
either on my mother or on me." 

" Forgive! " he said, in a faint voice. 

" Walk along the boulevard, I shall hear your 
footstep, and when I want to see you I will open my 
window. But I will neither allow you to run that risk 
nor run it myself, except for a serious reason. Why 
have you forced me by your imprudence to commit 
another on my own part, and drive you to think ill 
of me? " 

In his eyes I saw tears, and I thought them the 
noblest answer in the world. 

" You must think my behaviour exceedingly for- 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ward," I went on, with a smile. We walked up and 
down under the trees, once or twice, in silence. Then 
words came back to him. 

' You must think me utterly stupid. And indeed 
I am so drunk with happiness, that I have neither 
strength nor wits left in me. But be sure, at all events, 
that the very fact that you do a thing makes it holy 
in my eyes. The reverence I feel for you can only 
be compared with my reverence for God himself. 
And besides, Miss Griffiths is here " 

" She is here on other folks' account, not on ours, 
Felipe," I said hastily. That man understood me, my 
dear soul. 

" I know very well," he rejoined, with the most 
submissive of glances at me, " that even if she were 
not here, everything between us two would be just as 
though she saw us. Even if we are not in men's sight, 
we are .always in the sight of God, and we stand as 
much in need of our own self-respect as of the respect 
of others." 

" I thank you, Felipe," said I, holding out my 
hand to him with a gesture which I have no doubt 
you can imagine. " A woman, and I am a true woman, 
is always inclined to love a man who understands 
her. Oh, no more than inclined," I added, laying 
one finger on my lips. " I do not wish you to have 
more hope than I choose to give you. My heart will 
never belong to any one but the man who is able 
to read it and know it thoroughly. Our feelings, 
without being exactly similar, must have the same 

i5i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

scope and the same level. I make no attempt to make 
myself appear greater than I am, for no doubt such 
qualities as I think I possess carry their own faults 
with them. Still I should be very unhappy if I did not 
possess them." 

" First of all, you accepted me as your servant, and 
then you gave me leave to love you." He trembled 
as he spoke, and looked at me between every word. 
" I have more than I sued for at first." 

" But," I answered quickly, " your lot seems to 
me happier than my own. I should not be sorry to 
alter mine — and that is in your hands." 

" It is my turn to thank you now," he answered. 
" I know the duty of a loyal lover. I must prove that 
I am worthy of you, and you have the right to test me 
as long as it may please you. You have even power, 
God help me, to cast me off, if you should be disap- 
pointed in me." 

" I know you love me," I replied. " Up to the 
present " — I laid merciless emphasis on this last word 
— " you are the suitor I prefer, and that is why you are 
here to-night." 

We took a few more turns up and down, talking 
as we walked, and I must confess that once my Span- 
iard's mind was set at ease, he expressed, not his pas- 
sion, but his tender affection with the most artless 
eloquence, illustrating his feeling for me by an ex- 
quisite comparison of the divine love. That thrilling 
voice of his, which imparted a special value to ideas 
that were already so full of delicacy, was like a night- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ingale's. He spoke in an undertone, pouring out his 
words eagerly like a gushing spring, the overflowing 
of his full heart. 

"Hush!" I said at last, " or I shall stay here 
longer than I ought," and with a gesture I dismissed 
him. 

" So now you are plighted, mademoiselle," quoth 
Griffiths to me. 

" That might be so in England," I answered care- 
lessly, " but not in France; I intend to marry for love, 
and not to be deceived — that's all." 

You see, my dear, love did not come to me, and so 
I have done as Mahomet did with his mountain. 

Friday. 

I have seen my slave once more. He has grown 
timorous, he has assumed an air of mystery and devo- 
tion, which I like. He seems to be imbued with a 
deep sense of my power and glory. But nothing, 
either in his look or manner, would lead the soothsay- 
ers of smart society to suspect the infinite adoration I 
perceive in him. 

Nevertheless, my dear, I am not swept away, nor 
ruled, nor mastered. On the contrary, it is I who con- 
quer, who rule, and who prevail. In other words, I 
can reason. Ah, how I wish I could recover that 
sensation of fear I felt, under the fascination of the 
teacher, the plain citizen, to whom I would not yield. 
There are two kinds of love — the love which com- 
mands, and the love which obeys. They are distinct, 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and they give birth to two separate passions, the one 
quite different from the other. Perhaps, if a woman 
is to have her full due from life, she ought to feel them 
both. Can these two passions ever blend together? 
Can the man, in whom we inspire love, inspire us with 
the same feeling? Will Felipe be my master one of 
these days? Shall I ever tremble as he trembles now? 
These questions thrill me through and through. 
He's very blind. In his place, under the lime-trees, 
I should have thought Mile, de Chaulieu a very 
cold coquette, starched and calculating. No, that 
kind of thing is not love; that is mere playing with fire. 
I care for Felipe still, but I am calm now, and at my 
ease. There are no more obstacles between us — dis- 
tressing thought ! I feel everything within me droop 
and collapse, and I am afraid to question my own 
heart. He should not have hidden the vehemence of 
his love from me. He has left me mistress of myself. 
Certainly this sort of blunder brings me no benefit. 
Yes, my dearest, delightful as is the memory of that 
half hour spent under the trees, the pleasure it gave 
me seems to me far inferior to my sensations while I 
was wondering, " Shall I go, or shall I not? Shall I 
write to him, or shall I not? " Can it be the same with 
all pleasures? Would it be better to put them off 
than to enjoy them? Is anticipation really superior to 
possession? Are the rich really the poor? Have we 
both of us over-exaggerated our feelings by develop- 
ing the strength of our imagination out of all meas- 
ure? There are moments when this idea strikes cold 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

to my heart. Do you know why? I am thinking of 
returning to the bottom of the garden without Grif- 
fiths! Whither shall I go at this rate? Imagination 
may know no bounds, but enjoyment has its limits. 
Tell me, sweet doctor in petticoats, how I am to rec- 
oncile these two goals of our feminine existence? 



155 



XXII 

FROM LOUISE TO FELIPE 

I am not pleased with you. If you have wept over 
Racine's Berenice, if you have not thought it the 
most hideous of all tragedies, you will not understand 
me, and we shall never understand each other. Let us 
part — let there be an end to our meetings — forget me 
— for if you do not give me a satisfactory answer, I shall 
forget you. You will become the Baron de Macumer 
to me, or rather you will become nothing at all — as 
far as I am concerned, it will be as though you had 
never existed. At Mme. d'Espard's yesterday you 
wore a sort of air of satisfaction which was excessively 
displeasing to me. You seemed to be certain that 
you were loved. Altogether your self-possession hor- 
rified me, and I failed to recognise in you at that 
moment the servitor you described yourself as being 
in your first letter. Far from being absent, as a man in 
love should be, you made witty remarks. This is not 
the behaviour of the true believer — he is always bowed 
down in the presence of the divinity. If I am not a 
being superior to all other women, if you do not look 
on me as the spring of your existence, I am less than 
a woman — because then I am merely a woman in 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

your sight. You have sowed distrust in my soul, Fe- 
lipe, and its murmur has drowned the voice of affec- 
tion. When I look back over our past, I see I have a 
right to be distrustful. Learn, Sir Constitutional 
Minister of all the Spains, that I have pondered deeply 
over the parlous condition of my sex. My innocence 
has held flaring torches without burning its fingers. 
Lend an attentive ear to that which my young ex- 
perience has taught me, and which I now repeat to 
you. In all other matters, duplicity, .lack of faith, 
broken promises, meet their judges, and those judges 
inflict punishments. But it is not so with love. Love 
must be at once victim, accuser, advocate, judge and 
executioner. For the most hideous of perfidies, the 
vilest of crimes, are those which remain unknown. 
They are committed between human hearts, they have 
no witnesses, and it is in the interest of the murdered 
heart, of course, to hold its peace. Love, then, has its 
own code and its own vengeance — the world has no 
part in them. Now I have made a vow that I will 
never pardon a crime, and in matters of the heart 
there is no such thing as a trivial offence. Yesterday 
you looked like a man who was certain he was loved. 
If you were not certain of this, you would be wrong. 
But it would be criminal on your part if that certainty 
were to rob you of the ingenuous charm with which 
the fluctuations of hope have hitherto endowed you. 
I do not desire to see you either a faint heart or a 
fop. I will not have you tremble lest you should lose 
my affection, because that would be an insult. But 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

neither do I choose that a sense of security shall 
permit you to carry your love lightly. You must 
never seem more self-possessed than I appear my- 
self. If you do not know the anguish a single idea 
of doubt stirs in the soul — tremble lest I should teach 
it you. By one single glance I yielded up my heart 
to you, and you have read it. You possess the purest 
feelings that ever sprang in a young girl's breast. 
The thought and meditation of which I have spoken 
have only enriched the brain; but if a wounded heart 
be driven to take counsel with the intellect, that 
girl, believe me, will be something like the angel who 
knows all things, and is capable of all. I swear to 
you, Felipe, that if you love me, as I believe you do, 
and if you allow me to suspect the slightest diminu- 
tion in those feelings of fear, obedience, reverent ex- 
pectation, and submissive longing, of which you have 
given me indications; if any day I come to perceive 
the smallest slackening in that first and noble love 
which has passed from your heart into mine, I will say 
nothing to you. I will not weary you with any letter, 
more or less dignified, more or less proud or angry, 
or even grumbling, like this one of mine. I will not 
say one word, Felipe. You would see me sad, with 
the sadness of one who watches the approach of 
death. But I would not die without having set the 
most horrible blight upon you, without having 
dishonoured the woman you have loved in the most 
shameful manner, and implanted an eternal regret 
within your heart; for you would see me lost in 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the eyes of men on earth, and damned forever in the 
life beyond. 

Do not make me jealous, then, of another, and a 
happy Louise, of a Louise who was loved with a holy 
adoration, of a Louise whose heart was gladdened by 
a love that knew no shadow, and who, as Dante so 
sublimely puts it, possessed 

" Senza brama, sicura ricchezza." 

Let me tell you that I have sought all through his 
Inferno to discover the most agonizing of tortures, a 
frightful moral punishment, to which would be added 
the eternal vengeance of the Most High. 

Yesterday, then, thanks to your behaviour, the 
cold and cruel dagger of suspicion entered my heart. 
Do you understand me? I doubted you, and it was 
such agony that I desire to be relieved of future 
doubt. If you find my service too hard for you, leave 
it — and I shall bear you no malice. Am I not well 
aware that you are a clever man? Keep all the blos- 
soms of your soul for me. Let your eyes seem dim 
to the outer world. Never place yourself in a situa- 
tion which may expose you to flattery, or praise, 
or compliment from any other being. Come to me, 
bowed with hate, the object of a thousand slanders, 
or loaded with scorn. Tell me that women do not 
understand you, that they pass close beside you with- 
out seeing you, and that not one of them will ever 
love you. Then you will learn what the heart and the 
love of Louise hold for you. Our treasure must 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

be so safely buried that the whole world may tread 
on it, and never guess it. If you had been a handsome 
man I should, no doubt, never have bestowed the least 
attention on you, and so should never have discovered 
in your person that world of causes which lie at the 
root of love; and although we know no more about 
these causes than we know how it is the sun makes the 
flowers bloom or the fruit ripen, there is one, never- 
theless, which I do know and which is my delight. 
Your noble face keeps its character, its language, its 
expression for me alone. It is I alone who possess 
the power to transform you and turn you into the 
most lovable man on earth. Therefore I do not 
choose that your intellect should slip out of my hand. 
It must not be revealed to others, any more than your 
eyes, your charming mouth, and all your features may 
speak to them. The light of your intelligence, like 
the brightness of your glance, must be kindled by me 
alone. Remain the gloomy, cold, sullen, and disdain- 
ful grandee of Spain you have been. Then you were 
like some untamed though shattered power, amid the 
ruins of which no man dared venture; they watched 
you from afar. Now, I see you opening up conven- 
ient paths, so that all may enter, and before long you 
will be transformed into a mere polite Parisian. Have 
you forgotten my programme? Your love was a 
little too clearly evident in your joy. My glance was 
needed to prevent you from letting the occupants of 
the most clear-sighted, the most satirical and the wit- 
tiest drawing-room in Paris into the secret that you 

1 60 






The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

owed your brilliancy to Armande Louise Marie de 
Chaulieu. I think you too great-minded to adopt 
any political artifice in connection with your love; 
but if you were not to treat me with all the sim- 
plicity of a child, I should be sorry for you; and in 
spite of this first mistake, you are still an object of 
deep admiration on the part of 

Louise de Chaulieu. 



161 



XXIII 

FROM FELIPE TO LOUISE 

When God sees our shortcomings, he sees our re- 
pentance too. You are right, my dear mistress. I felt 
I had displeased you, without being able to discover 
the cause of your displeasure. But you have made 
that clear to me, and you have given me fresh reason 
to adore you. That jealousy of yours, so like the jeal- 
ousy of the God of Israel, has filled me with delight. 
There is nothing more sacred nor more holy than 
jealousy. Oh, my fair guardian angel, jealousy is the 
sentinel who never slumbers; jealousy is, to love, what 
suffering is to man — a truthful monitor. Be jealous 
of your servant, Louise. The oftener you strike him, 
the more humbly, submissively, pitifully, he will caress 
the rod, knowing your severity proves how much you 
care for him. But alas! my dear one, if they escaped 
you, will God himself give me credit for all the efforts 
I have made to overcome my own timidity and subdue 
the feelings you have taken to be weak in me. Ah, 
it was a mighty effort that I made to show you what 
I had been before I began to love you. At Madrid 
my conversation was considered agreeable, and I 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

wanted you to find out for yourself whatever powers I 
possessed. If this is vanity, you have punished it very 
thoroughly. That last look of yours set me trembling 
as I have never trembled before — not even when I 
saw the French troops before Cadiz — not even when 
my life hung on a deceitful sentence spoken by my 
King. Vainly had I sought the cause of your dis- 
pleasure, and the disunion of our souls drove me to 
despair, for I must act on your will, think with your 
thought, see through your eyes, joy in your delight, 
suffer by your pain, as surely as I feel the sensations 
of heat and cold. To me the crime and the anguish 
lay in the lack of simultaneity in that heart-life of ours, 
which you have made so beautiful. I have displeased 
her, said I to myself a thousand times over, like a mad- 
man. My beautiful, noble Louise, if anything could 
have increased my absolute devotion to you, and my 
unshakeable belief in your pure conscience, it would 
be your teaching, which has fallen on my heart like a 
new light. You have explained my own feelings to 
me. You have cleared up things that have appeared 
confusedly to my mind. . . . Oh, if this be your idea 
of punishment, what are your rewards? But to have 
been accepted as your servant already fulfilled all my 
desire. To you I owe an unhoped-for life. I am 
vowed to you. I do not draw my breath in vain. My 
strength has found employment were it only in suffer- 
ing for your sake. I have told you before, I say it now 
again, you will always find me what I was when I of- 
fered you my humble and modest service. Yes, even 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

lost and dishonoured, as you say you might become, 
my adoration would be deepened by your self-sought 
misfortunes. I would cleanse your wounds, I would 
heal them up, my prayers should convince the Al- 
mighty of your innocence and that your shortcomings 
are another's crimes. Have I not told you that my 
heart holds all the diverse affections that a father, a 
mother, a brother, a sister, would feel for you? That 
above and beyond all things, I am your family — every- 
thing or nothing, just as you may choose? But is it 
not you who have imprisoned so many hearts within 
the heart of this one lover? Forgive me, then, if, 
now and then, the lover overrides the father and the 
brother, when you remember that beneath the lover 
the father and the brother still remain. If you could 
read my heart, when I see you, radiant in your beauty, 
calmly seated, the cynosure of every eye, in your car- 
riage at the Champs-Elysees, or in your box at the 
opera. . . . Ah, if you knew how little personal feel- 
ing there is in the pride with which I listen to the 
praise extorted by your beauty and your dignity, and 
how I love the unknown strangers who gaze at you 
in admiration. When you chance to rejoice my soul 
by a greeting, I am proud and humble, both at once. 
I go on my way as though God had blessed me. I 
come home rejoicing, and my joy leaves a long furrow 
of light within my soul. It shines even in the clouds 
of smoke from my cigarette, and makes me feel more 
sure than ever that every drop of the blood that 
courses in my veins is yours alone. After I have seen 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

you, I come back to my study, decked with a Moor- 
ish splendour, utterly eclipsed by the beauty of your 
portrait, the instant I touch the spring that keeps it 
hidden from every eye. And then I lose myself in 
labyrinths of contemplation. I live over whole poems 
of bliss. Soaring on high, I gaze over the course of a 
whole future existence on which 1 dare to set my 
hope. Has it ever happened to you in the silence of 
the night, or athwart the clatter of the gay world, to 
hear a voice whispering in the dear dainty little ear I 
worship? Do you know nothing of the endless sup- 
plications I make to you? By dint of gazing at you in 
the silence, I have ended by discovering the reason of 
your every feature, and how each corresponds with 
some perfection of your inner being. Then I make 
Spanish sonnets — sonnets of which you know nothing, 
for my verses are too far below my subject, and I dare 
not send them to you — on the agreement between 
these two exquisite natures. So utterly is my heart 
absorbed in yours, that I am never a moment without 
thinking of you; and if you ceased to quicken my life, 
after this fashion, I should be full of suffering. Now, 
Louise, do you understand the anguish I endured at 
having, most unwittingly, roused your displeasure, 
and being unable to discover its cause? This fair dual 
existence was checked, and I felt an icy chill upon my 
heart. At last, in my utter inability to account for the 
discord, I began to think you had ceased to care for 
me. I was turning back, very sadly but still thank- 
fully, to my station as your servant, when the arrival 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

of your letter filled my heart with joy. Oh, chide me 
like this forever! 

A child who had fallen down, raised himself up, 
and, hiding his suffering, said to his mother, " Forgive 
me." Yes, he craved her pardon for having given 
her pain. Well, I am as that child. I have not 
changed, I give you the key to my nature with all 
the submission of a slave. But, dear Louise, I will 
make no more false steps. See to it that the chain 
which binds me to you is always kept so taut that a 
touch may impart your slightest wish to the man who 
will always be your slave, 

Felipe. 



i 66 



XXIV 

FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE 

October, 1S23. 

Dear Friend: You who were married within 
two months to a poor ailing body into whose mother 
you have turned yourself, can know nothing of the 
frightful vicissitudes of that drama played out in 
human hearts which we call love — wherein everything 
in one moment turns to tragedy, with death in a look 
or in a careless answer. I have kept back a cruel but 
a decisive test, which shall be Felipe's final ordeal. 
I was resolved to find out whether I am loved " in spite 
of all," that noble and sublime motto of the Royalists, 
and why not of Catholics as well? 

He walked up and down with me under the lime- 
trees in our garden the whole night long and not even 
the shadow of a doubt was in his heart. The next 
morning he loved me better, and I was just as pure 
and noble and maidenly in his eyes as I had been be- 
fore. He had not taken the smallest advantage of me. 
Oh, he is a true Spaniard; a true Abencerrage. He 
climbed my wall in the dark to kiss the hand I held 
out to him from my balcony. He nearly killed him- 
self. But how many young men would have done the 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

same! All that is nothing. Christians will endure 
the most frightful martyrdom for the sake of reaching 
Heaven. 

The day before yesterday, in the evening, I drew 
the King's future Ambassador to the Spanish Court, 
my much-honoured father, apart, and said to him, 
with a smile : 

" Sir, a few of your friends believe you are about to 
marry your beloved Armande to the nephew of an 
Ambassador, who, in his desire for this alliance, which 
he has long been seeking, settles his fortune and his 
titles on the young couple after his death, and at once 
insures them an income of a hundred thousand francs, 
besides settling a dowry of eight hundred thousand 
francs upon the bride. Your daughter weeps, but 
bows to the resistless authority of your majestic and 
paternal will. Some spiteful folk are saying that her 
tears cloak a selfish and ambitious nature. We are 
going to the noble's box at the opera to-night, and 
the Baron de Macumer will be there." 

" A hitch in the negotiations? " said my father, 
as if I had been an ambassadress. 

" You are taking Clarissa Harlowe for Figaro," 
I replied, with a glance full of scorn and irony. 
" When you see my right hand ungloved, you'll con- 
tradict this impertinent tale, and let it be seen that it 
offends you." 

" I need have no anxiety about your future. You 
have no more the mind of a young girl than Jeanne 
d'Arc had a woman's heart. You'll be quite happy. 

1 68 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

You'll never love any one, and you'll let yourself be 
loved." 

This time I burst out laughing. 

"What's amiss with you, little coquette?" he 
said. 

" I tremble for the interests of my country," quoth 
I, and seeing he did not understand, I added, " at 
Madrid." 

" You have no idea," said he to the Duchesse, 
" how this young lady has learnt to laugh her father to 
scorn in one short year." 

" Armande laughs everything to scorn," said my 
mother, looking full at me. 

" What can you mean? " I cried. 

" Nothing daunts you, not even the night damps, 
which might give you rheumatism," she replied, with 
another look. 

" The mornings are so burning hot," I answered. 

The Duchesse dropped her eyes. 

" It is high time she were married," said my father. 
" It will be done, I hope, before I leave Paris." 

" Yes, if you choose," I answered simply. 

Two hours later we were blooming like four roses 
in the front of the box — the Duchesse de Maufrig- 
neuse, Mme. d'Espard, my mother, and myself. I 
sat sideways, with one shoulder turned to the audi- 
ence, so that I could see everything, without being 
seen, that happened in that roomy box, which fills up 
one of the corners cut off the back of the theatre, be- 
tween the pillars. At the first entr'acte a young man 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

of feminine beauty, whom I always call Le Roi des 
Ribands, made his appearance. Comte Henri de Mar- 
say entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a 
smile on his lips, and a general air of joy and delight. 
He paid the preliminary civilities to my mother, to 
Mme. d'Espard, to the Duchesse, and to M. de 
Canalis, and then he said to me: 

" I wonder whether mine will be your first con- 
gratulations on an event which will make you the ob- 
ject of much envy." 

" A marriage? " I replied. " Must a young person 
just out of her convent remind you that the marriages 
that are talked about never come to pass? " 

M. de Marsay had leant over to whisper in Ma- 
cumer's ear, and by the mere motion of his lips I knew 
exactly what he was telling him. 

" Baron, you may have fallen in love with that 
little flirt, who has been making use of you. But as it 
is with you a question of marriage and not of a 
mere passion, 'tis always just as well to know what is 
going on." 

Macumer shot one of those glances of his, which to 
me are a perfect poem, at the officious scandalmonger, 
and cast him back some such rejoinder as " I love no 
little flirt," with a look which so delighted me that 
the instant I saw my father I took off my glove. 
Felipe had not felt the slightest fear, nor the tiniest 
suspicion. He has thoroughly realized all my expec- 
tations of his nature. All his belief is solely centred 
in me alone, the world and its lies have no hold upon 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

him. The Abencerrage never moved a muscle, his 
blue blood never tinged his olive cheek. The two 
young Counts went out together. Then I said to 
Macumer laughingly, " M. de Marsay has been mak- 
ing you some epigram about me." 

" Much more than epigram," he answered, " an 
epithalamium." 

" You are talking Greek to me," I answered with 
a smile, and I rewarded him with a certain look which 
always puts him out of countenance. 

" I hope so, indeed," cried my father, turning 
to Mme. de Maufrigneuse. " Society is full of the 
vilest gossip. The moment a young lady begins to 
go out, everybody is wild to see her married, and the 
most absurd stories are invented. I will never ask 
Armande to marry against her own inclination. I shall 
go and take a turn in the crush-room, for people may 
think I am allowing this story to get about so as 
to put the idea of this marriage into the Ambas- 
sadors head, and Caesar's daughter must be even 
less doubted than his wife, who must be above all 
suspicion." 

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d'Es- 
pard glanced, first at my mother, and then at the Bar- 
on, with an expression at once eager, mocking, sly, 
and full of suppressed inquiry. The wily creatures had 
guessed something at last. Of all hidden things love 
is the most public, and I really believe we women ex- 
hale it from our persons; the woman, indeed, who 
could conceal it must be a perfect monster. Our eyes 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

reveal even more than do our tongues. After I had 
enjoyed the exquisite delight of finding Felipe as 
noble as I could wish him to be, I naturally began to 
long for something more. I made him the precon- 
certed signal which was to bring him to my window 
by the dangerous road already known to you. A 
couple of hours later I found him there, erect as a 
statue, standing against a wall, his hand resting on a 
corner of my balcony and his eyes fixed upon the glim- 
mer of the lights within my room. 

" My dear Felipe," I said, " you have done well to- 
night. You have behaved as I should have behaved 
myself, if I had been told you were going to be 
married." 

" I thought you would have told me of such an 
intention before any one else," he replied. 

" And what is your right to that privilege? " 

" The right of a devoted servant." 

" Are you that really? " 

" Yes," he answered, " and I shall never change." 

" Well, then, if this marriage were necessary — if I 
were to make up my mind " 

The soft light of the moon was brightened, as it 
were, by the two glances he shot, first on me and 
then at the abyss below the wall. It was as though 
he were asking himself whether we might not die 
there together in one crash. But the thought which 
flashed like lightning over his face and eyes was 
instantly mastered by a mightier force than that of 
passion. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

" An Arab has only one oath," said he, in a voice 
that choked. " I am your servant; I belong to you; I 
will live my whole life for you." 

The grasp of his hand on the balcony seemed to 
weaken. I laid my hand on his, and said: 

" Felipe, my friend, from this moment I am your 
wife, by my own free-will. Go to my father in the 
morning and ask him for my hand. He desires to 
keep back my fortune, but you will undertake to settle 
it on me, without having received it, and your suit 
will most certainly be accepted. Now I am not Ar- 
mande de Chaulieu any more. Depart at once! 
Louise de Macumer must not be guilty of the slightest 
imprudence." 

He turned pale, his knees bent under him. He 
sprang to the ground, a full ten feet, without hurting 
himself in the least. Then, after having caused me the 
most horrible alarm, he waved his hand to me and 
disappeared. 

" So I am loved," said I to myself, " as never 
woman was loved before." And I fell asleep as happy 
as a child. My fate was settled forever. Toward two 
o'clock my father sent for me to his study, where I 
found the Duchesse and Macumer. There was a short 
exchange of civil speeches. I answered very simply 
that if M. Henarez and my father were agreed, I 
had no reason to oppose their wishes. Thereupon my 
mother kept the Baron to dinner, after which meal we 
all four went out to drive in the Bois de Boulogne. I 
cast a very satirical look at M. de Marsay as he 

173 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

rode past us, for he noticed Macumer and my father in 

the front of the carriage. 

My dearest Felipe has had his cards printed again, 

thus: 

HENAREZ, 

Des Dues de Soria, Baron de Macumer. 

Every morning he brings me the most delicious 
and magnificent bouquet. In the midst of it I always 
find a letter containing a Spanish sonnet in my honour 
which he has written during the night. 

To avoid making this packet too heavy, I send 
you, as specimens, the first and the last of these 
sonnets, which I have translated for you word for 
word and line by line. 

FIRST SONNET 

" More than once, dressed in a thin silk vest — 
With my sword drawn, and a pulse that throbbed no whit the 

faster — 
I have awaited the onslaught of the furious bull 
Whose horns are sharper than the crescent moon. 

" Humming an Andalusian seguidillo, I have climbed 
The slope of a redoubt, under a hail of lead ; 
I have wagered my life on the green cloth of chance, 
With no more care for it than for a gold doubloon. 

" Once I would have snatched the ball from a cannon's mouth, 
But I believe I have grown more timid than a frightened hare — 
Or a child that sees a ghost in the fold of his window curtain. 

" For when your gentle eyes are turned on me — 
A cold sweat stands on my brow, my knees bend under me — 
I tremble, I shrink, and all my courage fails." 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

SECOND SONNET 

" Last night I longed for sleep that I might dream of thee — 
But jealous slumber fled my eyes — 
I drew near the balcony and gazed upon the sky : 
For when I think of thee my eyes look always upwards. 

" Then came a strange phenomenon, which love alone can explain — 
The firmament had lost its sapphire tinge — 
The stars like lustreless diamonds in their golden setting 
Looked down with dim eyes, shedding chilly rays. 

" The moon, no longer painted with silver and lily white, 
Travelled mournfully across the dreary sky, 
For thou hast robbed the heavens of all their splendour ! 

" The whiteness of the moon gleams on thy lovely forehead — 
All the blue of heaven shines in thine eyes, 
And thy lashes are all star-beams ! " 

Could any young girl be assured she fills all her 
lover's thoughts in more delightful fashion? What 
think you of this love which lavishes all the flowers 
of intelligence, and all the flowers of earth, on the ex- 
pression of his fervour? For the last ten days I have 
been making acquaintance with the far-famed Span- 
ish gallantry of bygone times. 

Well, my dear, and how do things go with you at 
La Crampade, where I so often take my walks abroad 
and watch the progress of our agricultural operations? 
Haven't you a word to tell me about our mulberry 
trees and all the things we planted last winter? Does 
everything succeed after your heart's desire? Have 
the flowers blossomed in your wifely bosom even as 
they have bloomed in our shrubberies — I dare not 
say our garden-beds. Does Louis still sing you mad- 

175 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

rigals? Do you get on well together? Is the gentle 
murmur of your streamlet of conjugal affection a 
better thing than the turbulent torrent of my love? 
Is my sweet doctor in petticoats vexed with me? I 
can hardly believe it, and if I did I would send Felipe 
to cast himself at your feet and bring me back for- 
giveness or your head. My life here, dear love, is ex- 
quisite. I would fain know how life goes with you 
in Provence. We have just increased our family by 
the addition of a Spaniard, as brown as a Havana 
cigar, and I am still awaiting your congratulations. 

Seriously, my sweet Renee, I am uneasy. I am 
afraid you may be gulping down some misery of your 
own for fear it should sadden my rapture. Write 
me without delay. Send me several pages describing 
all the tiniest incidents of your life, and mind you tell 
me if you are still holding out, if your " free-will " 
is still erect, or on its knees, or sitting meekly down 
— which would be serious. Do you fancy the events 
of your married life do not occupy my thoughts? 
Sometimes all you have written me sends me into 
a reverie. Often when people have thought I was 
watching the ballet twirl at the opera, I have been 
saying to myself: " Half past nine o'clock now, per- 
haps she is going to bed. Is she all alone with her 
free-will? or has her free-will gone to join all the other 
free-wills whose owners have ceased to value them? " 

A thousand loves to you! 



176 



XXV 

FROM RENF^E DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 

October. 
Impertinence: Why should I have written to 
you? What was there for me to tell? While you are 
leading your life crammed with love's joys and terrors, 
the furies and the blossoms of delight you have de- 
scribed to me — a life at which I look on as though 
it were some well-acted play — my existence follows a 
course as regular and monotonous as that of any 
convent. We are always in our beds by nine o'clock 
at night. We are always up with the sun. Our 
meals are always served with the most exasperating 
punctuality. Never does the most trifling accident 
break the calm. I have grown accustomed, and with- 
out much difficulty, to this regular arrangement of 
my time. This may be natural. What would life be, 
unless it were ruled by fixed laws, which, so Louis and 
the astronomers declare, rule every sphere. Orderli- 
ness never wearies one, and besides, I have made my- 
self rules, as to my toilet, which fill up all my time 
between the hour at which I rise and that of breakfast. 
My sense of feminine duty makes me desire to look 

charming at the meal. It is a satisfaction to myself, 

1?7 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and a very keen pleasure to the kind old father and 
to Louis. After breakfast we go out of doors. When 
the newspapers make their appearance I retire to see 
after my household duties, to read — for I read a great 
deal — or to write to you. I reappear an hour before 
we dine, and after that we play cards, or pay visits or 
receive them. Thus my days are spent, between a 
happy old man, who has no wish ungratified, and a 
younger one, whose whole bliss is centred in me. 
Louis's happiness is so immense that his joy has 
warmed my heart at last. Our happiness, of course, 
is not exactly pleasure. Sometimes of an evening, 
when I am not wanted for the game and lie back 
quietly in an arm-chair, my meditation grows so deep 
that I pass into your very being. Then I share your 
beautiful existence — so full of incident and colour 
and mighty stir — and I wonder whither this turbulent 
preface will lead you. Will it not kill the book? You 
may have all the illusions of love, dear child, but the 
realities of the married state are all that is left to me. 
Yes, your love passages sound to me like a dream. 
And I find it quite difficult to comprehend wherefore 
you make them so romantic. You want a man with 
a heart stronger than his sense, with more virtue and 
nobility than love. You want the embodiment of 
every young girl's dream. You ask for sacrifice that 
you may reward it; you put your Felipe to the test 
to discover whether hope, longing, curiosity, will en- 
dure. But, simple child, behind all your fanciful 
adornments stands an altar, before which an eternal 

i 7 8 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

bond is preparing for you. On the very morrow of 
the wedding day, the grim fact whereby the maid be- 
comes a woman, and the lover a husband, may over- 
throw the whole of the dainty edifice your cunning 
foresight has built up. Learn, once for all, that two 
lovers, every whit as much as a couple married as 
Louis and I have married, go forth, as Rabelais puts it, 
" to meet, beneath their wedded joys, a great Per- 
haps." 

I do not blame you — though it was a giddy thing 
to do — for talking to Don Felipe in your garden, for 
asking him questions, for spending a night on your 
balcony while he stood on the wall. But, child, this 
is trifling with life, and I dread lest life should trifle 
with you. I dare not advise you to do what my expe- 
rience tells me would be best for your own happiness. 
But let me tell you once more, out of my distant 
valley, that the secret of a successful marriage lies in 
these two words: Resignation and Sacrifice. For I 
see plainly that in spite of all your tests, your coquet- 
tish ways, and your cautious reconnoitring, you will 
marry, in the end, just exactly as I have married. By 
sharpening desire you deepen the precipice a little — 
that is all! 

Oh, how I wish I could see the Baron de Macumer 
and have a couple of hours' talk with him — so in- 
tensely do I desire your happiness! 



179 



XXVI 

FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE l'eSTORADE 

March, 1825. 

As Felipe, with true Saracen generosity, has real- 
ized all my parents' plans, and settled my fortune on 
me, without receiving it from them, the Duchesse is 
even more good-natured to me than before. She calls 
me " little sly-boots," " little rogue "; she vows I have 
" a sharp little nose." 

" But, dear mamma," said I, the night before the 
signature of the marriage contract, " you are writing 
down the effect of the truest, the simplest, the most 
disinterested, the most absorbing love that ever ex- 
isted to policy, to cunning, and to clever manage- 
ment. Please understand that I am not at all 
the ' rogue ' for whom you do me the honour to 
take me." 

" Come, come, Armande," she said, as she threw 
her arm around my neck and drew me near her to 
kiss my forehead. " You didn't choose to go back 
to your convent, you didn't choose to live unmarried, 
and like the noble and beautiful daughter of the Chau- 
lieus you are, you realized the necessity of raising up 
your father's house." ... If you only knew, Renee, 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

what flattery lay in those last words for the Duke, 
who was listening to our talk! " I have watched you 
for a whole winter, poking your little nose into every 
corner, weighing men well and truly, and recognising 
the real nature of French society as it now exists. 
And then you pitched on the one and only Spaniard 
who was capable of insuring you the delightful exist- 
ence led by a wife who rules supreme within her home. 
My dear child, you have managed him, just exactly 
as Tullia manages your brother." 

" What a school my sister's convent is! " cried my 
father. 

I cast a look at him that struck him dumb. Then 
I turned to the Duchesse, and I said: 

" Madame, I love my fiance, Felipe de Soria, with 
all the strength of my heart. Although this love was 
quite involuntary, and although I fought against it 
when it first rose up in my heart, I can swear to you 
that I never gave way to it till I was sure the Baron 
de Macumer possessed a heart worthy of mine, and 
that the delicacy, the generosity, the devotedness, the 
whole character and feeling of his nature, coincided 
with my own." 

" But, my dear child," she broke in, " he is as ugly 
as " 

" As you choose," I answered swiftly, " but I love 
his ugliness." 

" Listen, Armande," said my father. " If you love 
him, and if you have had strength to master your 
passion, you mustn't imperil your future happiness. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Now happiness largely depends on the first days of 
married life." 

" Why not say the first nights," cried my mother. 
" Leave us, sir," the Duchesse added, looking at my 
father. 

" In three days, little one, you are to be married," 
whispered my mother in my ear. " So it behoves me 
now to give you, without any vulgar snivelling, the 
weighty counsel every mother gives her child in such 
a case. You love the man you are about to marry, 
therefore I need waste no pity either on you or on 
myself. You have only been with me for a year. If 
that has been long enough for me to grow fond of 
you, it is not a length of time that would warrant my 
bursting into tears over the loss of your company. 
Your wit has been even greater than your beauty. 
You have flattered my maternal vanity, and you have 
behaved like a good-tempered and lovable daughter, 
and you will always find me an excellent mother. 
You smile? . . . Alas! often when a mother and 
daughter have got on well together, the two married 
women will fall out. I want you to be happy. There- 
fore listen to me. The love you now feel is a childish 
love — the love that is natural to every woman, all 
women being born to cling to some man. But, my 
child, the sad thing is that there is only one man in 
the world for each of us — one, not two. And the man 
we are destined to cherish is not always the man we 
have chosen to be our husband, believing that we loved 
him. Strange as these words may seem to you, I be- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

seech you to ponder them. If we do not love the man 
we have chosen, that may be our fault or his, or the 
fault of circumstances over which neither he nor we 
have any control at all. Yet none of these things 
need prevent the man our family chooses for us, the 
man to whom our heart turns, from being the man 
of our love. The barrier that rises later between him 
and us is often the outcome of a lack of perseverance 
on the husband's part, or ours. To turn a husband 
into a lover is as delicate an undertaking as to turn 
a lover into a husband, and this last task you have 
just performed most admirably. Well, I say again, I 
want you to be happy. So remember, henceforward, 
that your first three months of wedlock may bring 
you great unhappiness, unless you on your part sub- 
mit yourself to the married state, with all the obedi- 
ence, the tenderness, and the wit you have displayed 
in your love-making. 

" For, my little rogue, you have indulged in all 
the innocent delights of a clandestine love affair. If 
the beginnings of your happy love are clouded by 
disappointment, dissatisfaction, and even by suffering, 
then come to me. Don't hope too much from mar- 
riage at the outset. It may very possibly bring you 
more pains than pleasures. Your happiness will need 
as much careful cultivation as your love has needed. 
Even if you were by chance to love your lover, you 
would always have the father of your children. There, 
dear child, lies the whole of our social life. Sacrifice 
everything to the man whose name is yours, the very 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

slightest hurt to whose honour and reputation must 
inflict a frightful breach upon your own. This sacri- 
fice of everything to the husband is not merely an 
absolute duty to all women of our condition, it is 
also the wisest course in our own interest. The no- 
blest prerogative of the great principles of morality 
is that they are true and profitable whatever may be 
the point from which we study them. I have said 
enough of all this. Now, I think you are disposed 
to be jealous; and I, too, my dear, am jealous! . . . 
But I would not have you foolishly jealous. Listen 
to me again. Jealousy which lets itself be seen is 
like a policy in which all the cards are laid upon the 
table. To acknowledge jealousy, to betray it, is surely 
to show one's hand, and that when one knows nothing 
of one's adversary's cards. In every circumstance 
we must know how to suffer in silence. However, 
I shall have some serious talk with Macumer about 
you the night before you are married." 

I took hold of my mother's beautiful arm and 
kissed her hand, leaving upon it a tear, which the tone 
of her voice had brought to my eyes. In that lofty 
teaching, worthy alike of herself and of me, I recog- 
nised a deep wisdom, an affection untouched by any 
social bigotry, and, above all, a real esteem for my 
own character. Those simple words of hers summed 
up the precepts life and experience had taught her — 
it may be at a bitter cost. She was touched, and 
said, looking at me: 

" Dear little girl, you have a terrible crossing be- 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

fore you; and most women, if they are ignorant or 
bereft of their illusions, are capable of doing like 
Lord Westmoreland." 

At that we both began to laugh. To explain the 
joke, I must tell you that at dinner the night before, 
a Russian Princess had been telling us that Lord 
Westmoreland, who had suffered frightfully when he 
crossed the Channel on his way to Italy, turned back 
when he heard that he had to cross the Alps as well. 
" I've had enough of crossings," said he. You'll un- 
derstand, Renee, that your dreary philosophy and 
my mother's lecture were calculated to reawaken all 
the terrors that used to disturb our souls at Blois. 
The nearer my wedding day approached, the more I 
gathered up my strength and will and all my feelings 
to face the terrible transition from girlhood into 
womanhood. All our talks came back to me. I read 
all your letters over again, and found them full of a 
sort of hidden melancholy. These alarms had the 
good effect of turning me into the ordinary common- 
place -fiancee known to engravers and the public. And 
every one thought me charming and most correct 
when the contract was signed. This morning at the 
Mairie, whither we went quite quietly, nobody was 
present but the necessary witnesses. I am finishing 
off this scrap while the preparations for dressing me 
for dinner are being made. We are to be married at 
the Church of Ste. Valere at twelve o'clock to-night, 
after a great party here. My terrors, I must confess, 
have given me a victim-like appearance and a sham 

185 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

modest air, which will insure me an admiration I do 
not in the least comprehend. I am delighted to see 
my poor dear Felipe is just as much abashed as I am. 
Society is hateful to him. He is like a bat in a glass- 
shop. 

" Happily this day will have a morrow," he whis- 
pered in my ear just now, without an idea he was say- 
ing anything peculiar. 

So shy and ashamed of himself is he, that he would 
prefer not to see a soul. When the Sardinian Ambas- 
sador came to sign our marriage contract, he took me 
aside and handed me a pearl necklace, the clasp com- 
posed of six magnificent diamonds. It was a present 
from my sister-in-law, the Duchesse de Soria. With the 
necklace there was a sapphire bracelet, within which 
is engraved the legend, " / love thee, though I know- 
thee not." Two charming letters were inclosed with 
these two presents, which I would not accept until I 
knew I had Felipe's permission. " For," said I to 
him, " I should not like to see you wear anything I 
had not given you." 

He was quite moved, and kissed my hand, say- 
ing: 

" Wear them for the sake of the motto and of the 
affection of the givers, which is genuine." 

Saturday Night. 
Here then, my poor Renee, you behold the last 
lines this maiden will ever write you. After the mid- 
night mass we start for a country-place which Felipe, 

1 86 






The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

with the most delicate consideration, has bought in 
the Nivernais, on the road to Provence. My name is 
Louise de Macumer even now, but I shall still be 
Louise de Chaulieu when I leave Paris, a few hours 
hence. Well, whatever I may be called, I shall never 
be anything to you except 

Louise. 






i8 7 



XXVII 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

October, 1825. 

I have never written you a line, my dearest, since 
we were married at the Mairie, and that is nearly eight 
months ago, and not a word from you either. This, 
madame, is too bad! 

Well, we started off with post-horses for Chante- 
pleurs, the country-place Macumer had bought in the 
Nivernais, on the banks of the Loire, some sixty 
leagues from Paris. Our servants, except my maid, 
had gone before us to await our coming, and we trav- 
elled very rapidly, arriving the following evening. I 
slept all the way from Paris to the other side of Mon- 
targis. The only freedom my lord and master per- 
mitted himself was to put his arm around my waist 
and make me rest my head on his shoulder, on which 
he had laid several handkerchiefs. This almost ma- 
ternal solicitude on his part, which prevented him from 
going to sleep himself, filled me with the strangest 
and deepest emotion. I fell asleep under the blaze 
of his dark eyes. I woke, and they were still shining 
on me with the same fervour, the same love. But 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

what thousands of thoughts had passed through his 
brain. He had kissed my forehead twice over. 

We breakfasted in our carriage at Briare. At half 
past seven that evening, after we had talked, as you 
and I have talked at Blois., and admired the Loire as 
you and I used to admire it together, we passed into 
the long and splendid avenue of lime, acacia, sycamore 
and larch trees, that leads up to Chantepleurs. At 
eight o'clock we were sitting at dinner. At ten we 
were in a charming Gothic chamber, embellished with 
everything that modern luxury can invent. My Felipe, 
whom every one else thinks ugly, seemed to me full 
of a great beauty — the beauty of goodness, of charm, 
of tenderness, of the most exquisite refinement. Of 
passionate desire I did not perceive a trace. All 
through our journey he had behaved like some friend 
of fifteen years' standing. He had described, as he so 
well knows how to do it (he is still the man depicted 
in his first letter), the frightful tempests he had curbed 
and forced to die away on his face, as on the surface 
of the waters. 

" There is nothing very terrifying in marriage so 
far," said I, as I went over to the window and looked 
out over a beautiful park bathed in the loveliest moon- 
light and redolent of balmy odours. 

He came close to me, put his arm about me again, 
and said: 

" And why should it terrify you? Have I failed 
in my promises even by one look or gesture? Shall I 
ever fail in them? " 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Never did look or tone wield so mighty a power. 
His voice stirred every fibre and woke every feeling in 
me. His glance burnt me like the sun. 

" Oh," I cried, " what Moorish perfidy lies be- 
neath this perpetual slavery of yours? " 

Dear, he understood me. Therefore, my darling, 
if I have not written for months, you will guess why, 
now. I am forced to remind myself of the young girl's 
strange past, so that I may explain the woman to you. 
Renee, I understand you now. Neither to her close 
friend, nor to her mother, nor perhaps even to herself, 
can a happy young wife speak of her happy marriage. 
That memory must be buried within her soul, yet an- 
other of those feelings which are hers alone, and which 
can never be described. What! the exquisite fool- 
eries of the heart, the overwhelming impulses of pas- 
sionate desire, have been dubbed a duty! What 
monstrous power conceived the notion of forcing 
woman to trample every refinement and all the in- 
stinctive modesty of her nature under foot, by 
turning these delights into a duty? How can 
these blossoms of the soul, these roses of exist- 
ence, these poems of intense feeling, be a duty owed 
to a being she does not love? Rights! and in 
such sensations! Why, they sprout and blossom 
under the sun of love; or else their germs are killed 
by the chill of repugnance and aversion! Love alone 
can wield such spells. Ah, my noble Renee, you 
have grown very great in my eyes. I bend the knee 
before you. Your penetration and clear-sighted- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ness amaze me. Yes, the woman who does not, like 
me, hide some secret love marriage beneath her legal 
and public vows, must throw herself on motherhood 
just as a soul that has lost everything in this life casts 
itself on the next. One merciless fact is the out- 
come of everything you have written me — none but 
superior men really know how to love. I know why 
now. Man is impelled by two principles. These are 
desire and feeling. Weak or inferior natures take de- 
sire for feeling; whereas in superior natures the effect 
of their exquisite feeling conceals desire. This feel- 
ing, by its excessive strength, inspires them with 
extreme reserve and, at the same time, with an adora- 
tion for the woman. A man's power of feeling natu- 
rally coincides with the strength of his mental organi- 
zation, and thus the man of genius is the only man 
whose delicacy can approximate to ours. He knows, 
divines, understands the woman's nature. He bears 
her on the wings of a passion chastened by the reti- 
cence of his own feeling. And when we are swept 
away by the simultaneous intoxication of mind, heart 
and senses, we do not fall down to earth; we rise to 
the celestial spheres, and, unhappily, we have to leave 
them all too soon. Here, my dear soul, you have 
the philosophy extracted from my first three months 
of married life. Felipe is an angel. I can think aloud 
in his presence. Rhetoric apart, he is my second self. 
His noble-heartedness is something singular. Pos- 
session makes him cling still closer to me. In his very 
happiness he finds fresh cause to love me. To him 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

I am the fairest part of his own being. I can see 
plainly that, far from revealing any deterioration in 
the object of his delight, the lapse of our married years 
will only increase his trust, evoke fresh feeling, and 
strengthen the bond between us. What a blessed 
frenzy! I am so constituted that happiness leaves a 
bright glow within me — it warms my soul, it saturates 
my inner being. The intervals between each delight 
are like the short nights between summer days. The 
sun that gilded the heights as it sank to rest finds 
them scarce cooled when it rises in the sky once more. 
By what fortunate chance did this come to me from 
the very outset? My mother had stirred a thousand 
fears within me. Her forecasts — which struck me as 
being full of jealousy, though quite free from the 
slightest pettiness — have been falsified by the event; 
for your alarms and hers and mine have all been scat- 
tered to the winds. 

We spent seven and a half months at Chantepleurs, 
like a pair of runaway lovers who were fleeing from 
their parents' wrath. Our love has been crowned with 
flowers of delight, and all our mutual existence is 
decked with them. One morning when I was particu- 
larly happy, my thought, by a sudden revulsion, flew 
to my Renee and her prudent marriage. And then I 
divined the nature of your life and fathomed it. Oh, 
dearest angel, why do we speak a different tongue? 
Your purely social marriage, and mine, which is noth- 
ing but a happy passion, are no more intelligible to 
each other than the infinite is to the finite. You are 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

down on the earth; I am in heaven. You are in the 
human sphere; I in the divine. I rule by love; you 
rule by forethought and duty. I soar so high that if 
I were to fall I should be shivered into atoms. But I 
must hold my peace, for I should be ashamed to tell 
you of all the brightness, the wealth, the ever-fresh 
delights of such a springtide of love as mine. 

We have been in Paris for the last ten days, in a 
charming house in the Rue du Bac, remodelled by 
the architect whom Felipe employed to remodel 
Chantepleurs. I have just been hearing that heavenly 
music of Rossini's, to which I listened some months 
since with disquiet in my soul — vexed, although I 
knew it not, by the curiosity that love brings in its 
train. Now it is gladdened by the lawful joys of a 
happy marriage. Every one thinks I have improved 
in looks, and I take a childish pleasure in hearing 
myself called Madame. 

Renee, my sweet saint, my own happiness brings 
my thought back perpetually to you. I feel I care 
for you more than I ever did. I am so devoted to you. 
I have studied your conjugal existence so deeply by 
the light of the beginning of my own, and I see you to 
be so great, so noble, so sublimely virtuous, that I 
hereby declare myself not your friend only, but your 
inferior, your sincere admirer. Looking at what my 
own marriage is, it is almost clear to me that I should 
have died if it had been otherwise. And yet you live! 
On what feeling? Tell me that? And, indeed, I will 
not say one jesting word to you. Derision, my dearest, 
13 193 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

is the daughter of ignorance. People make a jest of 
that which they do not understand. " When the re- 
cruits begin to laugh, tried soldiers look grave," said 
the Comte de Chaulieu to me — he, a mere cavalry 
captain, who had never travelled farther than from 
Paris to Fontainebleau,and back again from Fontaine- 
bleau to Paris. And I have guessed too, my dear love, 
that you have not told me everything. Yes, you 
have hidden some wounds from me. You suffer; I can 
feel it. I have dreamed whole novels about you, far 
from you as I am, and with nothing to go on but 
the little you have told me about yourself, to discover 
the reasons of your conduct. 

" She has given wedded life a trial," thought I 
one evening, " and that which has been bliss to me 
has been nothing but a misery to her. She has gained 
nothing by the sacrifices she has made, and she would 
fain limit their number. She has cloaked her sorrow 
under the pompous axioms of social morality." Ah, 
Renee, one admirable thing about enjoyment is that 
it needs neither religion, nor fuss, nor fine words. It 
is everything in itself. Whereas men, to justify the 
vile ingenuity which has compassed our slavery and 
vassalage, have heaped up theories and maxims. If 
your self-immolation is noble and sublime, can my 
bliss, sheltered by the white and gold canopy of Mother 
Church, and signed with due flourish by the grumpiest 
of Mayors, be a monstrosity? For the honour of the 
law, for your own sake — but, above all, to complete 
my own happiness — I would have you happy, my 

194 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Renee. Oh, tell me you feel a little love creeping 
into your heart for the Louis who worships you! Tell 
me that Hymen's solemn and symbolic torch has 
served to do something more than reveal the darkness 
about you. For love, my darling, is to our moral 
being just exactly what the sun is to the earth. I 
can not help reverting to the blaze that shines on 
me, and that will end, I fear, by burning me quite 
up. Dear Renee, you who in the ecstasy of your 
friendship would say to me under the vine arbour at 
the convent, " I love you so dearly, Louise, that if 
God were to make himself manifest to me I would ask 
him to give me all the sorrows of life and you all 
its joys. Yes, I have a passionate longing to suffer." 
Well, my darling, I feel like that for you now, and I 
implore the Almighty to bestow half my joys on you. 

Listen to me! I have guessed that under the 
name of Louis de l'Estorade you hide an ambitious 
woman. So see he is elected Deputy at the next 
elections. He will be nearly forty then, and as the 
House will not meet till six months after that, he 
will be just the right age for a political man. Come 
to Paris, and you will see. 

My father and the friends I shall make for myself 
will recognise your value, and if your old father-in-law 
chooses to entail his estate, we'll get Louis created a 
Count. That will be something gained; and then, 
besides, we shall be together! 



195 



XXVIII 



RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER 



December, 1825. 

My Blissful Louise: You have made me dizzy. 
I have been sitting here for a moment alone on a 
bench at the foot of a small bare rock, my arms drop- 
ping wearily down, holding your letter, on which a 
few tears have lain glistening in the setting sun. In 
the distance the Mediterranean glitters like a steel 
sword-blade. Two or three sweet-scented trees 
shadow the seat, about which I have planted a huge 
jasmine bush, some honeysuckles, and Spanish broom. 
Some of these days the boulder will be all covered 
with climbing plants. There is Virginia creeper 
on it already. But winter is upon us, and all the 
greenery has grown like a shabby hanging. When I 
am sitting here nobody ever comes near me, for every 
one knows I want to be alone. The bench goes by 
the name of " Louise's seat." Does not that tell you 
that even when I am here alone, I am not alone? 

When I tell you all these details, which will seem 
so trivial to you, when I describe the verdant hope 
that already clothes this bare steep rock, which some 
whim of Nature has crowned with a splendid um- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

brella pine, I do it because here thoughts and ideas 
have come to me, to which I cling. 

Even as I rejoiced in your happy wedlock, and 
(why should I not acknowledge all the truth to you?) 
even as I envied it with all my might, I felt within me 
the first stirrings of my unborn child, and that throb 
in the depths of my physical existence straightway 
found its answer in my inmost soul. This obscure 
sensation — a premonition, a delight, a pain, a promise, 
a reality, all in one — this happiness which belongs to 
me alone in all the world and lies a secret betwixt me 
and God — this strange mystery, told me that my 
rock should some day be carpeted with flowers, that 
the joyous laughter of children should ring about it, 
that my womb was blessed at last, and that I was des- 
tined to bring forth life in full measure. I knew then 
that I was born for motherhood, and this first cer- 
tainty that I bore another life within my own brought 
a most blessed consolation to me. An infinite joy had 
crowned all the long days of sacrifice which have al- 
ready made Louis so happy. 

" Sacrifice," said I to myself, " art thou not great- 
er than love? Art thou not the deepest bliss of all, 
because thou art an abstract, a life-giving bliss? Art 
thou not, O Sacrifice! that creative power far greater 
and higher than its own effects? Art thou not the 
mysterious, untiring divinity hidden behind all the 
innumerable spheres, in some undiscovered spot 
through which each world must pass in turn? Sacri- 
fice! alone with its secret full of silent joys which none 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

suspect, and on which no profane eye ever rests. 
Sacrifice! that jealous and overwhelming, that mighty 
and victorious deity — exhaustless because he is bound 
up with the very nature of things, and therefore im- 
mutable in spite of all the outpourings of his strength. 
Sacrifice! that is the watchword of my life." 

Your love, Louise, is the result of Felipe's effort 
upon you. But the radiance I cast over this family 
will be perpetually reflected back from my little circle 
upon me. Your fair, golden harvest is short-lived. 
But will not mine be all the more enduring because it 
has ripened late? It will be constantly renewed. 
Love is the daintiest theft Society has ever contrived 
to practise upon Nature. But is not maternity Na- 
ture's own joy? My tears change to a smile of happi- 
ness. Love makes my Louis a happy man. But mar- 
riage has brought me motherhood, and I am deter- 
mined to be happy too. Then I came slowly back to 
my green-shuttered house to write this letter to you. 

So, my dearest, the most natural and the most sur- 
prising event in a woman's life took place in mine five 
months ago. But I may tell you, in an undertone, 
that neither my heart nor my intellect have been one 
whit stirred thereby. I see all those about me are de- 
lighted. The future grandfather encroaches on his 
grandson's rights — he has grown like a child himself. 
The father assumes a serious and anxious air. They 
all overwhelm me with attentions, and they all talk 
about the bliss of being a mother. Alack! I alone 
feel nothing at all, and dare not betray the state of 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

utter indifference in which I am. I am constrained 
to fib a little so as not to sadden their joy. As with 
you I can be perfectly frank, I will confess that, as far 
as I have gone, my maternity has no existence, except 
in my imagination. 

The news of. my condition was as great a surprise 
to Louis as it was to me. Is that not enough to 
show you the child came of its own accord, on no 
other summons than its father's impatient and eagerly 
expressed desire? Chance, my dear soul, is the God 
of maternity. Although, so our doctor declares, 
these same chances harmonize with the will of Nature, 
he does not attempt to deny that the children so ap- 
propriately described as " love-children " probably 
turn out both beautiful and clever, and that their lives 
often seem sheltered, as it were, by the happiness 
which shone like a beaming star over the moment of 
their conception. So it may be, my Louise, that 
motherhood will bring you delights which I shall 
never know. Perhaps a woman loves the child of a 
man she adores, as you adore your Felipe, better than 
she can love the child of a husband whom she has 
married in cold blood, to whom she gives herself as 
a duty and for the sake, in fact, of reaching woman's 
full estate. These thoughts, which I keep in the bot- 
tom of my heart, increase the seriousness with which 
I look forward to becoming a mother. But, as there 
can be no family unless there are children, I long to 
hasten the time when those family joys, which are 
to be my whole existence, shall begin for me. At 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the present moment my life is one of mystery and 
expectation, the nauseating discomfort of which no 
doubt prepares a woman to endure still greater suf- 
fering. I watch myself. In spite of all Louis's ef- 
forts — his love showers care, and gentleness, and af- 
fection, on me — I have some dim alarms with which 
are mingled the distaste, the uneasiness, the strange 
fancies, peculiar to my condition. If I am to tell 
you the things just as they are, and risk inspiring 
you with some aversion for my present employment, 
I will confide to you that I have the most inexpli- 
cable fancy for a certain sort of orange — an eccen- 
tric taste, which nevertheless comes quite naturally 
to me. My husband goes over to Marseilles to pro- 
cure me the finest oranges to be had. He has had 
them sent from Malta, from Portugal, from Corsica. 
But all those oranges I leave untouched. I hurry 
off to Marseilles, sometimes I even walk there, and 
there I devour vile, half-rotten things that are sold 
four for a sou, in a little street running down to the 
port, close to the Hotel de Ville. The blue and green 
mould upon these oranges shines like diamonds to 
my eyes. They are like flowers to me. I remember 
nothing of their deathly odour, and only feel that their 
flavour excites my palate, that their warmth is wine- 
like, and their taste delicious. Well, dear soul, there 
you have the first amorous sensation I have known. 
Those disgusting oranges are my joy. You do not 
long for Felipe more than I long for that rotten fruit. 
I even slip out on the sly, I tear off, with active step, 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

to Marseilles. I shiver with voluptuous expectation 
as I approach the street. I am in terror lest there 
should be no more over-ripe oranges in the shop. I 
fly at them, I eat them up, I devour them in the open 
street. To me they are fruits grown in Paradise, and 
their pulp the most exquisite of all foods. I have seen 
Louis turn his head away to avoid the stench they 
exhale. I have recalled Obermann's terrible saying 
in that dreary elegy which I am sorry I ever read, 
" Les ratines s'abrenvent dans line eau fetide." " The 
roots quench their thirst in a fetid pool." Since I 
have begun to eat these oranges the nausea from 
which I suffered has disappeared and my health is 
quite restored. These depraved longings must have 
some meaning, since they are a natural symptom, and 
quite half of the sex is subject to such fancies, some 
of them really monstrous. When my condition be- 
comes very apparent, I shall never go outside this 
place. I should not like any one to see me under such 
circumstances. 

I am longing eagerly to know at what moment of 
one's life maternity begins. It can hardly be in the 
midst of the frightful suffering I so greatly dread. 

Farewell, my happy creature! Farewell, friend, 
in whom I live again and in whose person I am able 
to conceive those exquisite delights, that jealousy 
over a single look, those whispered words, and all 
those joys that wrap us round as though in a different 
atmosphere, a different state of being, a different 
light, a different life. Ah, pretty one, I know what 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

love is too. Never tire of telling me everything. 
Let us keep our agreement faithfully. I will spare 
you nothing. And, to close this letter seriously, I 
will tell you that as I read yours over again, a deep 
and unconquerable terror fell on me. It seemed to 
me as though this insolent love of yours were setting 
God at defiance. If sorrow, that sovereign lord of 
the whole earth, finds no place at your festive board, 
will not his rage be stirred against you? Show me 
the glorious fortune he has not overthrown? Ah, 
Louise, don't forget your prayers in the midst of all 
your happiness. Do good to others, be kind and char- 
itable. Let your modesty ward off adversity from you. 
Since my marriage I have grown even more religious 
than I was in the convent. You tell me nothing 
about religion in your Paris letters. It strikes me that 
in your worship of Felipe you look (contrary to the 
proverb) more to the saint than to God himself. But 
these terrors of mine spring from my too great love. 
You do go to church together, don't you? And you 
do good by stealth? You'll think this last bit of my 
letter very countrified, perhaps. But consider that 
my fears are dictated by my extreme affection — an 
affection, as La Fontaine understood the feeling, that 
grows uneasy and takes fright over a dream, an idea 
that is no more than a shadow. You deserve to be 
happy, seeing that in the midst of all your happiness 
you think of me, just as in my monotonous existence 
— a trifle dull, but full enough; sober, but fruitful — 
I think of you. All blessings go with you, then! 

202 



XXIX 

M. DE L'ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER 

December, 1825. 
Madame: My wife is anxious you should not 
be informed of the joyful event which has just 
occurred through the commonplace medium of a 
formal announcement. She has just been confined of 
a fine boy, and we shall defer his christening until 
the period of your return to your country-house at 
Chantepleurs. We are in hopes, Renee and I, that 
you will push on as far as La Crampade, and stand 
godmother to our first-born son. In this hope I have 
registered the child under the names of Armand Louis 
de l'Estorade. Our dear Renee has suffered horribly, 
but with the patience of an angel — you know her na- 
ture. She has been supported through this first ma- 
ternal trial by the certainty that she was conferring 
happiness on us all. Without indulging in the some- 
what absurd exaggeration of a father who enjoys his 
paternal dignity for the first time, I may assure you 
that little Armand is a splendid fellow; but you will 
have no difficulty in believing that, when I tell you he 
has Renee's face and Renee's eyes. This proves his 
sense already. Now that the doctor and the accoucheur 

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have both assured us that Renee is not in the slightest 
danger — for she is nursing the child, he thrives apace, 
and his mother's vigorous nature insures a liberal sup- 
ply of nourishment — we are free, my father and I, to 
luxuriate in our happiness. So great is our joy, 
madame, so deep, so full, it has so stirred our house- 
hold, it has so altered my dear wife's existence, that, 
for your own sake, I wish you may soon be in her 
case. Renee has prepared a set of rooms which I wish 
I could make worthy of our guest. You would be 
welcome to them with fraternal cordiality, at all 
events, though splendour may be lacking. 

Renee has told me, madame, of your intentions 
with regard to us, and I seize this occasion of thank- 
ing you for them, all the more eagerly because nothing 
could be more seasonable. The birth of my boy has 
reconciled my father to sacrifices such as an old man is 
somewhat loath to face. He has just bought two 
properties. La Crampade will now bring in some 
thirty thousand francs a year. My father is about to 
solicit the King's permission to entail this estate, but 
if you obtain him the title you mentioned in your last 
letter, you will already have done something for your 
godson. 

As for myself, I will follow your advice with the 
sole object of enabling you and Renee to be together 
during the Parliamentary session. I am studying 
hard, and endeavouring to become what is known as 
" a specialist." But nothing will give me more cour- 
age than to know that you will protect my little 

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Armand. So give us your promise, pray, that you will 
come, in all your beauty and your grace, your grand- 
eur and your wit, to play the part of fairy godmother 
to my eldest boy. Thus, madame, you will add eternal 
gratitude to those feelings of respectful affection with 
which I have the honour to remain, your very humble 
and obedient servant, 

Louis de l'Estorade. 



205 



XXX 

FROM LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE 

January, 1826. 

Macumer woke me up just now, and brought me 
your husband's letter, my dear love. The first thing I 
say shall be " yes." We shall be going to Chante- 
pleurs toward the end of April. To me it will be 
pleasure heaped on pleasure to travel to see you, and 
to stand godmother to your first child. Only I must 
have Macumer for the godfather. A Catholic alliance 
with any other sponsor would be hateful to me. Ah, 
if you could have seen the expression on his face when 
I told him that, you would know how deeply the 
darling loves me. 

" I am all the more anxious that we should go 
to La Crampade together, Felipe," said I, " because 
perhaps a child will come to us there. I want to be 
a mother, too, . . . although, indeed, I should be 
sorely divided between a child and you. To begin 
with, if I were to see you prefer any creature, even 
my own son, to me, I don't know what would happen! 
Medea may have been right after all, the ancients had 
their good points." 

He burst out laughing. So, dear soul, you have 
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the fruit without having had the flowers, and I have 
the flowers without the fruit. The contrast between 
our fates is still kept up. There is enough philosophy 
in us to make us cast about, one of these days, for the 
meaning and moral of it all. Pshaw! I have only been 
married ten months; you must admit there's not much 
time lost as yet. 

We are living the life — dissipated, and yet full — of 
a happy couple. Our days always seem to us much 
too short. Society, to which I have returned in the 
garb of a married woman, admires the Baronne de 
Macumer more than it admired Louise de Chaulieu. 
A happy love imparts a beauty of its own. As we 
drive together, Felipe and I, on one of these sunny, 
frosty January days, when the trees of the Champs- 
Elysees are laden with white starry clusters — united 
now, in the face of all Paris, on the very spot where we 
were parted only a year ago — thoughts crowd on me 
in thousands, and I am afraid lest, as you foresaw 
in your last letter, my insolence may grow too great. 

If I know nothing of the joys of maternity, you 
shall describe them to me, and through you I will be 
a mother, too — but, to my thinking, nothing can be 
compared to the delights of love. You'll think me 
very odd, but ten times certainly in the last ten 
months I have caught myself wishing I might die 
when I was thirty, in all the glory of my life, crowned 
with the blossoms of love and lapped in its delights; 
to go my way, satisfied, without a shadow of disap- 
pointment, having lived in the sunshine, in the blue 

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ether, even to die, in part, perhaps, of love, my gar- 
land intact, even to every leaf, and all my illusions 
with me still. Just think what it must be to have a 
young heart in an old body; to meet dull, cold faces 
where every one, even those for whom we cared not, 
used to smile upon us; to be, in fact, a venerable 
woman — oh, that must be hell on earth! 

We have had our first quarrel on this very sub- 
ject, Felipe and I. I wanted him to have courage, 
when I was thirty, to kill me in my sleep, without my 
knowing it, so that I might pass out of one dream into 
another. The wretch wouldn't do it! I threatened 
to leave him alone in the world, and he turned white, 
poor boy! This mighty Minister has become a reg- 
ular baby, my dear soul. You would never believe 
how much youth and simplicity have lain hidden in 
his heart. Now that I think aloud with him, just as I 
do with you, and have taken him thoroughly into my 
confidence, we are full of admiration for each other. 

My dear, the two lovers, Felipe and Louise, are 
anxious to send a present to the young mother. We 
should like to send something that would please you, 
so tell me frankly what you want, for we don't at all 
cling to the ordinary system of giving a surprise. 

What we should like is to send you something 
which may recall us to you constantly by a pleasant 
memory, and by something for daily use, and which 
will not easily wear out. Our cheeriest, most fa- 
miliar, most lively meal, because it is that at which 
we are always alone, is our breakfast. I have there- 

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fore planned to send you a special service called a 
breakfast service, which shall be ornamented with 
figures of children. If you approve of my idea, answer 
me quickly. For if I am to bring it to you, I must 
order it, and these Paris artists are so many "Rois 
faineants." This shall be my offering to Lucina. 

Farewell, dear nursing mother! I wish you all 
maternal happiness, and I wait longingly for your first 
letter, which will tell me everything, will it not? That 
" accoucheur " made me shudder — the very word in 
your husband's letter, struck, not my eyes, but my 
heart. Poor Renee, a child costs a heavy price, 
doesn't it? I'll tell that godson of mine how much he 
ought to love you. 

A thousand tender loves, my dear one! 



14 



209 



XXXI 

FROM RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER 

It is almost three months now since my child was 
born, and I have never been able to find a single tiny 
moment to write to you, my dear soul. When you 
have a child of your own you will forgive me this, even 
more freely than you do at present — for you have 
punished me a little by sending me so few letters. 
Write to me, my dear love. Tell me about all your 
gaieties, paint your happiness to me in the brightest 
hues; don't spare the ultramarine for fear of distress- 
ing me, for I, too, am happy — happier than you would 
ever imagine. 

I went in great state, according to the custom of 
our old Provencal families, to return thanks for my 
safe delivery at the parish church. The two grand- 
fathers, Louis's father and my own, supported me on 
either side. Ah, never did I bend the knee before 
God in such a passion of gratitude. There are so 
many things for me to tell you, so many feelings to 
describe, that I know not where to begin. But out of 
the midst of the confusion one radiant memory rises, 
the thought of the prayer I offered in that church. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

When I felt myself transformed into a rejoicing 
mother, on the very spot where as a girl I had doubted 
of life and of my future, I fancied I saw the Virgin 
on the altar bowing her head to me and showing me 
the Divine Child, who seemed to smile upon me. 
What a blessed overflowing of heavenly love I felt 
as I held out our little Armand to receive the bene- 
diction of the priest, who touched him with the 
chrism, until he can be fully baptized! 

But you will see us together, my Armand and me. 

My child — why now I've called you my child! — 
but indeed it is the sweetest word that ever rises to 
a mother's heart, and mind, and lips — well then, dear 
child, I dragged myself about our garden, wearily 
enough all through those last two months, weighed 
down by the discomfort of my burden. I did not know 
how dear and tender it was, in spite of all the misery 
it was costing me. I felt such terrors, such deadly 
presentiments, that no amount of curiosity could 
overcome them. I reasoned with myself, told myself 
there was nothing to dread in any natural event — I 
promised myself the joys of motherhood. But alas! 
I felt no stir at my heart, even when I thought of the 
child, which stirred so briskly within me; and, my 
dear, that kind of stir may be pleasant to a woman 
who has already borne children, but in the first in- 
stance the griever of an unseen life brings one more 
astonishment than satisfaction. I give you my own 
experience, you know me to be neither insincere nor 
theatrical, and my child- was more the gift of God — for 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

it is God who sends us children — than that of a beloved 
husband. Let us bid farewell to these bygone sor- 
rows, which, as I think, I shall never know again. 

When the awful moment came upon me I had 
gathered up such powers of endurance and I had ex- 
pected such cruel anguish that, so I am told, I bore 
the hideous torture in the most astounding fashion. 
For about an hour, dear love, I was sunk in a con- 
dition of prostration which was something like a 
dream. I felt as if I were two persons. An outer 
husk, torn, tortured, agonized; and an inner soul that 
was all calm and peace. While I was in that strange 
condition my sufferings seemed to blossom like a 
crown of flowers above my head. It was as though 
a huge rose that sprang upward out of my skull grew 
larger and larger, and wrapped me all about. The rosy 
colour of the blood-stained blossom was in the very 
air, and everything was red to me. Then, when I 
had reached a point at which body and soul seemed 
ready to part company, I felt a pang that made me 
think I was going to die that instant. I screamed 
aloud, and then I found fresh strength to bear fresh 
pains. Suddenly the hideous concert was hushed 
within me by the delicious sound of the little crea- 
ture's shrill wail. No words of mine will ever express 
that moment to you. It seemed to me that the whole 
world had been crying out with me, that everything 
that was not pain was clamour, and then that my baby's 
feeble cry had hushed it all. They laid me back in my 
great bed. It was like entering Paradise to me, in 

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spite of my excessive weakness. Then two or three 
people with joyful faces and tearful eyes held out 
the child to me. My dear, I cried out in horror: 

" What a little monkey! " I said. " Are you sure 
it is a baby? " I asked. And I lay back once more, 
rather grieved at not feeling more maternal. 

" Don't distress yourself, my dear," said my moth- 
er, who had constituted herself my nurse, " you've 
borne the finest child that ever was seen. Take care 
not to excite yourself; you must apply your whole 
mind now to growing dull; you must be just exactly 
like the cow that grazes for the sake of having milk." 

So I went to sleep, firmly resolved to do as Nature 
bade me. Ah, dearest, the waking up out of all that 
pain, those confused feelings, those first days during 
which everything is dim and painful and uncertain, 
was something divine. The darkness was lightened 
by a sensation the delights of which surpassed that of 
my child's first cry. My heart, my soul, my being, an 
individuality hitherto unknown was roused out of the 
shell in which it had been lying suffering and dull, 
just as the flower springs from the root at the blazing 
summons of the sun. The little rogue was put to my 
breast; that was my " Hat lax." Of a sudden I knew I 
was a mother. Here was happiness, delight — ineffable 
delight, although it be one which involves some suf- 
fering. O my beautiful, jealous Louise, how you will 
prize a pleasure which lies between ourselves, the 
child, and God! The only earthly thing the little 
creature knows is his mother's breast, that is the only 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

spot that shines to him in all the world. He loves it 
with all his strength; he thinks of nothing but the 
fountain of his life; he comes to it, and goes away to 
sleep, and wakes to come back to it again. There is 
an ineffable love in the very touch of his lips, and 
when I feel them, they give me pain and pleasure at 
once — a pleasure that becomes an actual pain — a pain 
that ends in delight. I can give no explanation of the 
sensation I feel radiate from my breast to the very 
springs of my life — for it seems as though it were the 
centre of a thousand rays, that rejoice my heart and 
soul. To bear a child is nothing, but to nurse it is a 
perpetual maternity. O Louise, no lover's caress can 
equal that of the little pink hands that move about so 
softly and try to cling to life. What looks the child 
casts, first at its mother's breast, and then at her eyes. 
What dreams she dreams, as she watches his lips 
clinging to his precious possession. All one's mental 
powers, as well as all one's bodily strength, are called 
into action. One's corporal life and one's intelli- 
gence are both kept busy. Every desire is more than 
satisfied. 

That heavenly sensation of my child's first cry — 
which was to me what the first sunbeam must have 
been to the earth — came back to me when I felt my 
milk flow into his mouth, and it came back to me 
again just now, when I read his first thought in his 
first smile. He laughed, my dear. That laugh, that 
look, that pressure, that cry, those four delights are 
infinite — they stir the very bottom of one's heart and 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

touch strings which nothing but they can reach. The 
spheres must be bound to the Deity, even as a child 
is bound to every fibre of his mother's being. God 
must be one great mother's heart. There is nothing 
visible, nor perceptible, in conception, nor even in the 
months of waiting; but to nurse a child, Louise, is a 
constant happiness. You watch the daily progress of 
your work, you see the milk grow into flesh, and 
blossom in the dainty fingers, so like flowers and quite 
as delicate — you see it form slender and transparent 
nails, and silky hair, and little restless feet. A child's 
feet — why, they have a language of their own — a 
child's first expression lies in them. To nurse a child, 
Louise, is to watch with astonished eye an hourly 
process of transformation. When the baby cries, 
you do not hear it with your ears, but with your 
heart. When its eyes smile, or its lips, or it kicks 
with its feet, you understand all it means as though 
God wrote it for you on space in letters of fire. Noth- 
ing else in the world possesses the smallest interest 
for you. The father . . . you are ready to kill him 
if he dares wake the child. The mother by herself is 
the whole world to her babe, just as the babe is the 
whole world to its mother. She feels so certain that 
her existence is shared by another, she is so amply re- 
warded for her care and suffering — for there is suf- 
fering ... as every nursing mother finds out for 
herself. 

In these five months my young monkey has grown 
into the prettiest creature that any mother ever 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

bathed with her happy tears, washed, brushed, 
combed, and adorned, for God himself only knows 
the unwearying delight with which a mother dresses, 
and undresses, brushes and washes and kisses her 
little blossom. My monkey, then, is not a monkey 
any longer, but a baby, as my English nurse calls him, 
a pink-and-white baby, and feeling himself loved, he 
doesn't scream so very much — but the real truth is 
that I hardly ever leave him, and I try to pervade his 
very soul with mine. 

Dearest, I feel something in my heart for Louis 
now which is not love, but which must complete the 
feeling in the case of a woman who does love. I am 
not sure that this tender regard, this gratitude, which 
is quite free from any interested feeling, is not some- 
thing beyond love. According to all you have told 
me about it, my darling, there is something frightfully 
earthly about love, whereas there is something very 
religious and divine in the affection of a happy mother 
for the man who has given her these endearing and 
never-ending joys. A mother's joy is a light shining 
over and illuminating the future, and reflecting back 
over the past, which it fills with delightful memories. 

And indeed old M. de l'Estorade and his son are 
kinder than ever to me. I have become a new per- 
son in their eyes. Their words and looks go to my very 
heart,' for they rejoice over me afresh each time they 
see or speak to me. The old grandfather is growing 
childish, I think; he gazes upon me with admiration. 
The first time I came downstairs to breakfast and he 

216 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

saw me eating with them and nursing his grandson, 
he began to cry. Those tears in the dry eyes which 
rarely shine with anything save thoughts of money, 
were an inexpressible delight to me — they made me 
feel as if the old fellow understood my joy. As for 
Louis, he was ready to tell the very trees and stones 
on the high-road that he had a son. He spends whole 
hours watching your godson asleep; he says he doesn't 
know if he will ever grow accustomed to seeing him. 
These demonstrations of excessive delight have re- 
vealed the extent of their fears and terrors to me, and 
Louis has ended by confessing that he had grave 
doubts, and indeed believed, he was fated never to 
have a child at all. My poor Louis has suddenly and 
vastly improved. He studies still harder than before. 
As for me, dear soul, I grow happier and happier every 
moment. Every hour adds some fresh bond between 
a mother and her child. The feeling within my heart 
convinces me that this maternal sentiment is imper- 
ishable, natural, and unfailing — whereas I strongly sus- 
pect that love has its intermissions. People do not 
love each other in the same fashion at every moment 
— the flowers embroidered into the tissue of this life 
are not always of the brightest colours. And then, 
love may and must come to an end. But motherhood 
need fear no decline; it deepens with the child's needs 
and develops with its growth. Is it not a passion, a 
need, a feeling, a duty, a necessity, and happiness, all 
at once? Yes, my dearest; this is the woman's own 
special life. It satisfies our thirst for sacrifice, and it 

217 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

is free from the disturbing effects of jealousy. And 
perhaps it is the only point, so far as we are concerned, 
on which Nature and Society are agreed. In this 
matter Society certainly has enriched Nature, for it 
has strengthened the maternal sentiment, by the addi- 
tion of the family spirit, with its continuity of name 
and race and fortune. What love must a woman lav- 
ish on the beloved being who has first acquainted her 
with such delights, has called the strength of her be- 
ing into action, and taught her the great art of moth- 
erhood! The birthright of the elder son, which is as 
old as the world itself, and is mingled with the origin 
of every society, seems to me not open to question. 
How many things does a child teach its mother! We 
give so many hostages to virtue by the incessant pro- 
tection we owe to the feeble creature born of us, that 
no wife has reached her true sphere unless she is a 
mother. Then alone does she unfold all her strength, 
perform the full duties of her life, and enjoy all its 
happiness and all its pleasures. A wife who is not a 
mother is an incomplete being — a failure. Make 
haste to be a mother, my dear one, then will your 
present happiness be multiplied by all my joys. . . . 
I broke off writing because I heard your godson 
cry. I can hear him crying from the bottom of the 
garden. I cannot send this letter without saying 
one word of good-bye to you. I have just read it 
over, and I am startled by the commonplaceness of 
the feeling it expresses. I fear, alas! that every moth- 
er has felt what I feel, and must express it in the same 

218 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

fashion. And I fear you'll laugh at me, just as people 
laugh at the simplicity of every father who talks 
about the beauty and intelligence of his children and 
thinks each one of them has something very remark- 
able about it. Well, dearest love, here is the great 
point of my letter — I will say it again: I am as happy 
now as I was unhappy before. This country-house, 
which is now to be a property settled on my eldest 
son, is my Promised Land. I have crossed my desert 
at last. A thousand loves to you, my dearest love! 
Write to me. I can read your description of your 
happiness and your love without shedding tears, now. 
Farewell ! 



219 



XXXII 

FROM MME. DE MACUMER TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE 

March, 1826. 

How's this, my love? For three months I have 
not written a line to you nor heard of you. . . . I'm 
the most guilty of the two, for I owe you a letter. 
But still I have never known you to be huffy. 

We took your silence, Macumer and I, to mean 
consent as to the breakfast service with the figures 
of children, and the pretty things will be sent off to 
Marseilles this very day. These Paris people have 
taken six months to make them. And it really woke 
me with a shock when Macumer suggested we should 
go and look at the service before the silversmith 
packed it up. Suddenly it struck me we had never ex- 
changed a word since that letter o£ yours that made 
me feel myself a mother in your person. 

Dearest, this dreadful Paris — there's my sole ex- 
cuse. I am still waiting to hear yours. Oh, what an 
abyss Society is! Didn't I tell you long ago that in 
Paris one has no chance of being anything but a 
Parisienne? The life here destroys all sentiment. It 
eats up all your time. It would eat up your very heart 
if you were not careful. What a wonderful master- 

220 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

piece is that character of Celimene in Moliere's Misan- 
thrope! She is the woman of fashion of Louis XIV's 
time, and of ours — the woman of fashion of all times, 
in short. What would become of me without my 
buckler — in other words, my love for Felipe? And 
indeed only this morning, thinking of it all, I told him 
he was my salvation. Though my evenings are all 
taken up with parties, balls, concerts, theatres, I can 
come back from them to the delights of love, to the 
sweet follies that gladden my heart and heal the stings 
the world inflicts upon it. I have never dined at home 
except on the days when we have entertained what are 
called one's friends, and I have never sat at home 
except on my reception days. I have a day of my 
own, the Wednesday, on which I receive my company. 
I have entered the lists with Mme. d'Espard, and Mme. 
de Maufrigneuse,and the old Duchesse de Lenoncourt. 
My house is considered a very pleasant one. I al- 
lowed myself to be made the fashion when I saw how 
happy my Felipe was in my success. My forenoons 
I devote to him — for from four o'clock in the after- 
noon till two o'clock in the morning I belong to 
Paris. Macumer is a most perfect host, so witty and 
yet so serious, so genuinely noble and so absolutely 
gracious — he would make himself loved even by a 
woman who had married him in the first place for her 
own convenience. My father and mother have de- 
parted to Madrid. Once Louis XVIII was dead the 
Duchesse easily persuaded our good-natured King 
Charles X to appoint her charming poet to the Em- 

221 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

bassy, and she has carried him off as an attache. My 
brother, the Due de Rhetore, condescends to consider 
me a superior woman. As for the Comte de Chaulieu, 
that carpet-knight owes me undying gratitude. Be- 
fore my father's departure my fortune was applied to 
settling a landed property worth forty thousand 
francs a year upon him, and his marriage with Mile, 
de Mortsauf, a great heiress from Touraine, is quite a 
settled thing. To avoid the extinction of the titles 
of Lenoncourt and Givry, the King is about to grant 
my brother the succession to the names, titles, and 
arms of these two houses. How, indeed, could his 
Majesty permit two such splendid names and their 
proud motto, Facicm semper monstramus, to drop out 
of existence? Mile, de Mortsauf, who is the grand- 
child and sole heiress of the Due de Lenoncourt — 
Givry will, I hear, have over a hundred thousand 
francs a year. My father has only made one stipula- 
tion — that the Chaulieu arms should be borne in an 
escutcheon of pretense on those of Lenoncourt. So 
my brother will be the Due de Lenoncourt. Young 
M. de Mortsauf, to whom the whole of this fortune 
should have passed, is in the last stage of consump- 
tion; his death is expected at any moment. Next 
winter, when the mourning for him is over, the mar- 
riage will take place. I am told I shall find Madeleine 
de Mortsauf a most delightful sister-in-law. Thus, as 
you see, my father's argument was sound. This result 
has gained me the admiration of many people, and 
my marriage is now accounted for. Out of affection 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

for my grandmother, the Prince de Talleyrand makes 
a great deal of Macumer, and thus our success is quite 
complete. Society, which began by finding fault with 
me, now lavishes approval on me. In short, I am 
now a power in this very Paris where, less than two 
years ago, I was so insignificant a person. Macumer 
sees his good fortune envied by every one about him, 
for I am " the wittiest woman in Paris." You know 
there are a score of " the wittiest women in Paris " in 
this city. The men coo words of admiration in my 
ear, or content themselves with expressing it by hun- 
gry glances. Really this concert of longing and ad- 
miration brings such a never-ending satisfaction to 
one's vanity, that I am now able to understand the 
excessive expenditure into which some women fall 
in their desire to enjoy these frail and fleeting joys. 
Such triumphs intoxicate one's pride, one's vanity, 
one's conceit, and every feeling, in short, that has 
to do with self. The perpetual worship so gets into 
one's head, that I never wonder when I see a woman 
grow selfish, forgetful, and frivolous in the midst of 
all her gaities. Society does certainly affect the 
brain. We shower the blossoms of our heart and in- 
tellect, our most precious hours, our most liberal 
efforts, on people who repay us with jealousy and 
empty smiles, and exchange the base coin of their 
empty phrases, their vain compliments and adulation, 
for the gold ingots of our courage, our sacrifice, and 
all the ingenuity we use to be beautiful, well dressed, 
witty, affable, and unfailingly delightful. We know 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

what a costly game it is, we know we are cheated, and 
yet, in spite of all, every one of us is devoted to it. 
Ah, dearest love, how one longs for a faithful heart, 
how precious are my Felipe's love and devotion, how 
dear you are to me! With what delight am I now 
preparing to turn my back on the play-acting here in 
the Rue de Bac, and in every Paris drawing-room, and 
to seek repose at Chantepleurs. In fine, after read- 
ing over your letter, I feel I shall have described this 
infernal paradise called Paris most truly when I tell 
you it is impossible for any woman of fashion to be a 
mother. 

I shall see you soon, my darling. We shall not 
delay more than a week at Chantepleurs, and we shall 
be with you toward the tenth of May. So we are to 
meet again, after two years' separation. How things 
have changed! We are both of us women, now. I 
am the happiest of Mistresses; you the happiest of 
Mothers. Though I have not written, my dearest 
love, it is not because I have forgotten you. And 
that monkey of a godson of mine — is he still pretty? 
Does he do me credit? I should like to have seen him 
take his first step in the world — but Macumer tells 
me even the most precocious children can hardly walk 
at ten months old. Well, we'll have a rare gossip, as 
they say at Blois, and I shall see whether, as many 
people declare, a baby spoils one's figure. 

P. S. — If you send me an answer, most noble moth- 
er! address your letter to Chantepleurs. I am just 
starting. 

224 



XXXIII 



FROM MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER 



Alack, my child, if ever you have a baby of your 
own, you'll find out whether there's any possibility of 
writing during the first two months of one's nursing. 
We are fairly worn-out, my English nurse, Mary, and 
I. But I know I haven't told you that I insist upon 
doing everything myself. Before the child was born 
I made all his clothes, and embroidered and trimmed 
all his caps myself. I am a slave, my dear, a slave 
all day and all night. First of all, Armand-Louis 
must be nursed whenever he chooses, and he always 
chooses. Then he has to be perpetually washed and 
tidied up, and dressed, and his mother so delights in 
watching him when he is asleep, and singing songs 
to him, and carrying him about in her arms when the 
weather is fine, that there is no time left for her to 
attempt to attend to herself. Well, while you had 
the gay world, I had my child — our child. How rich 
and full my life is! Oh, my dear, I am looking for 
your coming — you shall see. But I'm afraid his 
teething is beginning, and that you'll think him very 
noisy and fretful. He has not cried much as yet, for 
15 225 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

I am always by. Children only cry because they 
feel a want which nobody guesses, but I am perpetu- 
ally on the track of his. Oh, my dearest, how my 
heart-life has widened, while you have been narrowing 
yours down by setting it to serve the gay world. I am 
expecting you with all the eagerness of a hermit. I 
am longing for your opinion of l'Estorade, just as 
you, I am sure, long to know mine of Macumer. 
Write me your last stopping-place — my two men 
would like to go out to meet our illustrious guests. 
Come then, my Queen of Paris! come to our poor 
country-house, where you will be most lovingly wel- 
comed. 



226 



XXXIV 

MME. DE MACUMER TO VICOMTESSE DE l'eSTORADE 

April, 1826. 

Dearest: The address on this letter will inform 
you of the success of my endeavours. Your father-in- 
law is now the Comte de l'Estorade. I was deter- 
mined not to leave Paris without having obtained 
your wish for you, and I write this in the presence of 
the Garde des Sceaux, who has just come to tell me 
the decree is actually signed. 

We shall meet before long. 



227 



XXXV 

THE SAME TO THE SAME 

Marseilles, July. 
My sudden departure will have astonished you, 
and I am ashamed of it. But since I am always truth- 
ful, and since I love you just as much as ever, I am 
going to tell you the whole thing frankly in two 
words — I am horribly jealous. Felipe looked at you 
too much, you used to have little conversations at the 
foot of your rock that put me to torture, soured my 
temper, and were altering my whole nature. That 
Spanish beauty of yours must have reminded him of 
his own country, and of that Maria Heredia, of whom 
I am jealous — for I am jealous of his past. Your mag- 
nificent black hair, and your splendid dark eyes, your 
brow, eloquent of the joys of motherhood — the shad- 
ows of bygone anguish just touching their radiant 
light, the bloom of your Southern skin, whiter even 
than that which goes with my fair hair, your noble 
outline, your white bosom, shining under your laces as 
though it were some exquisite fruit to which my 
pretty godson clings — all these things pain my eyes 
and pain my heart. In vain did I put corn-flowers in 
my hair, or brighten the dulncss of my fair tresses 

228 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

with cherry-coloured ribbon — everything paled be- 
fore a Renee such as I had not dreamt I should find 
in the oasis of La Crampade. 

Besides, Felipe was too covetous of the child, and 
I was beginning to hate it. Yes! I envied the insolent 
baby-life that fills your house and peoples it with 
laughter and with noise. 

I read regret in Macumer's eyes, and cried over it 
two whole nights in secret. I suffered agonies while 
I was with you. You are too beautiful a woman and 
too happy a mother for me to be able to stay with you. 
Ah, hypocrite — and you complained! To begin with, 
your l'Estorade is a charming fellow; he talks very 
well; his black hair streaked with white is good to 
look at; he has fine eyes, and his manners have just 
that Southern touch which is attractive. From what 
I have seen, I am certain he will sooner or later be 
elected Deputy for the Bouches du Rhone, and he 
will make his way in the Chamber — for I shall always 
be ready to serve you in everything that concerns 
your ambition. The sufferings of his exile have given 
him that air of calm and steadiness which always 
seems to me to be half the battle in politics. In my 
view, my dear, the greatest thing in political life is 
to look solemn. And indeed I am always telling 
Macumer he must be a very great statesman. 

To sum it up, now that I am quite certain of your 
happiness, I am off at full speed to Chantepleurs, 
where I expect Felipe to make me, too, a mother. I 
will not have you there till I am nursing a child 

229 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

as beautiful as yours. I deserve every name you 
choose to call me — I am absurd and vile — I have no 
sense. Alas! all that comes to a woman when she 
is jealous. I bear you no ill-will, but I was in misery, 
and you will forgive me for having fled my suffering. 
In another two days I should have done something 
foolish — oh, yes, I should have committed some sin 
against good taste. In spite of the rage that tore my 
heart, I am glad to have been with you, I am glad 
to have seen you — so beautiful in your fruitful moth- 
erhood, and my friend still, amid your maternal joys, 
just as I still am yours, in the midst of all my love. 
Why, even here at Marseilles, a few steps from you, 
I am proud of you already — proud of the noble mother 
of children you will be. How truly you have divined 
your own vocation — for you seem to me to be born 
more of the mother than the mistress, just as I am 
born for love rather than for maternity. There are 
some women who can neither be the one thing nor 
the other; they are either too ugly or too stupid. A 
good mother, and a wife who is her husband's mis- 
tress, must be perpetually exerting their intelligence 
and their judgment, and must know how to bring all 
the most exquisite feminine qualities to bear at any 
moment. Oh, I have watched you well. And does 
not that tell you, my darling, that I have admired 
you? Your children will be happy, they will be well 
brought up, lapped in your tenderness, warmed by 
the beams of your heart's love. 

You can tell your Louis the truth about my de- 
230 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

parture, but present it in some creditable light to 
your father-in-law, who seems to be your man of busi- 
ness, 'and especially to your own family, so exactly like 
that of Clarissa Harlowe with its own Provencal wit 
thrown in. Felipe does not know why I have left 
you yet, and he will never know. If he inquires, I 
shall contrive to find some reason that will satisfy him. 
Probably I shall tell him you were jealous of me. You 
will permit me that little semi-official fib. Farewell! 
I am writing hurriedly so that you may have this 
letter at breakfast-time, and the postillion, who has 
undertaken to deliver it to you, is drinking below 
while he awaits it. Mind you kiss my dear little god- 
son for me. Come to Chantepleurs in October; I 
shall be there alone all the time that Macumer is in 
Sardinia, where he intends to make great alterations 
on his estates. Such, at least, is his plan at this mo- 
ment, and it is a piece of conceit on his part to have a 
plan. He fancies he is independent. So he is always 
very nervous when he mentions it to me. Farewell! 



231 



XXXVI 

THE VICOMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE 

MACUMER 

Words fail to express our astonishment, my dear, 
when we heard at breakfast-time that you were gone, 
and especially when the postillion who had taken 
you to Marseilles brought me back your mad letter. 
Why, naughty creature, all those conversations on 
" Louise's seat " at the foot of the rock only con- 
cerned your happiness, and you did very wrong to 
take offence at them. Ingrate! my sentence is that 
you must return at my very first summons. That 
hateful letter, scrawled on the innkeeper's paper, does 
not give me any of your stopping-places, so I am 
obliged to send my answer to Chantepleurs. 

Listen to me now, dear sister of my choice, and 
be sure, above all things, that my sole object is your 
happiness. There is a depth, my Louise, in your hus- 
band's soul and mind that overawes one as much as 
his natural gravity and his noble countenance. Fur- 
ther, his expressive ugliness and his soft glance have 
a real power about them. Therefore it was some time 
before I could reach that point of familiarity without 
which no thorough observation is possible. Besides, 

232 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

this ci-devant Prime Minister worships you even as 
he worships God. Hence he necessarily practises a 
profound dissimulation. And to lure the diplomat's 
secrets from beneath the rocks sunk deep down in his 
heart, I was fain to use all the skill and cunning I pos- 
sessed. But I ended, at last, without any suspicion 
on the good man's part, by discovering many things 
of which my darling does not dream. Of us two, I 
stand for Reason, even as you stand for Imagination. 
I am grave Duty; you are giddy Love. Fate has 
willed that this moral contrast, originally confined to 
our two persons, should be continued in our destinies. 
I am a humble provincial Vicomtesse, exceedingly 
ambitious, whose mission it is to guide her family on 
the road to prosperity. Whereas every one knows 
that Macumer was once the Duque de Soria, and you 
who are by right a Duchesse, are a Queen in Paris, 
where even kings find it so difficult to reign. You 
have a great fortune, which Macumer will double if 
he carries out his plans for working his huge proper- 
ties in Sardinia, the value of which is a matter of com- 
mon knowledge in Marseilles. You must confess that 
if one of us were to be jealous, it should be me. But 
let us thank God that we are both too noble-hearted 
for our friendship ever to descend to vulgar pettiness. 
I know you well. You are ashamed of having left me. 
For all your flight, I will not spare you one word 
of what I had made up my mind to say to you 
to-day at the foot of my rock. So read this letter 
carefully, I beseech you, for it concerns you even more 

233 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

than it concerns Macumer, although he is of great im- 
portance to my argument. In the first place, my 
darling, you don't love him. Before two years are 
out you will be weary of his adoration. You will never 
look upon Felipe as a husband, but always as a lover, 
with whom you will trifle quite unconcernedly, as 
every woman trifles with her lover. You stand in no 
awe of him, you have not that profound respect, that 
tenderness touched with fear which a truly loving 
woman feels for the man who is as a god to her. Oh, 
I've studied this matter of love, my child, and more 
than once I have sounded the depths of my own 
heart. Now that I have watched you well, I can say 
it to you — you do not love. Yes, dear Queen of Paris, 
you will long some day, like every other queen, to be 
treated like a " grisette." You will pine to be mas- 
tered and swept along by some strong man, who, in- 
stead of adoring you, will snatch at your arm and 
bruise it in the heat of a jealous quarrel. Macumer 
loves you too much ever to be able to rebuke or resist 
you. One look from you, one coaxing word, melts his 
strongest will to water. Sooner or later, you will de- 
spise him for loving you too much; he spoils you, alas! 
just as I spoiled you in the convent — for you are one 
of the most seductive of women, with the most en- 
chanting intelligences that can ever be conceived. 
Above all things, you are genuine, and our own hap- 
piness often exacts social falsehoods to which you will 
never condescend. Thus, Society demands that a 
woman should never allow the influence she exerts 

234 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

over her husband to appear. Socially speaking, a hus- 
band should no more seem to be his wife's lover, if he 
should love her in that fashion, than a wife should 
play the part of a mistress. Now you both trans- 
gress this law. In the first place, my child, if I am 
to judge the world by what you have told me of it, 
the last thing it will forgive is happiness — that must 
be hidden from its sight. But this is nothing. There 
is an equality between lovers which, to my thinking, 
can never be apparent between wife and husband, ex- 
cept under pain of a social upheaval, and of irreparable 
woes. A man who is a cipher is a frightful thing, but 
there is something worse — a man who has been turned 
into a cipher. Within a certain time, you will have 
reduced Macumer to nothing but the shadow of a 
man. His power of volition will have passed from 
him, he will not be himself, but something you have 
shaped to your own uses. So completely will you 
have assimilated him, that instead of two persons in 
your household, there will be only one, and that a 
being which must necessarily be incomplete. This 
will bring suffering on you, and by the time you con- 
descend to open your eyes, there will be no remedy for 
the evil. However we may strive, our sex will never 
possess the peculiar qualities of men, and these quali- 
ties are more than necessary, they are indispen- 
sable to the family. At this moment, and in spite of 
his blindness, Macumer has a glimpse of the future; 
he feels he is lowered by his love. His proposed jour- 
ney to Sardinia convinces me of his desire to recover 

235 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

himself by means of that temporary separation. You 
never hesitate to wield the power love gives you. 
Your authority is evident in your gestures, your looks, 
your voice. Oh, dearest, as your mother used to tell 
you, you behave like a giddy courtesan. 

You are quite convinced, darling, that I am vastly 
Louis's superior; but did you ever hear me contradict 
him? Do I not always behave in public as the wife 
who respects in him the ruler of the family? " Hy- 
pocrisy! " you'll cry. In the first place, the advice I 
think it well to give him, my opinions, my ideas, are 
never offered except in the silence and retirement of 
our own bed-chamber. But I can swear to you, my 
dearest, that even then I never affect any superiority 
over him. If I did not continue to be his wife in secret 
just as I am in public, he would have no confidence 
in himself. My dear, the perfection of beneficence is 
so thoroughly to efface one's self that the person on 
whom the benefit is conferred does not feel himself 
inferior to the person who confers it, and this self-sup- 
pression is full of endless sweetness. Thus, my chief 
glory has been that I deceived even you — for you have 
paid me compliments about Louis. And indeed, pros- 
perity, happiness, and hope, have helped him, in these 
two years, to recover everything of which misery, 
suffering, loneliness, and doubt, had robbed him. At 
present, then, according to what I have observed, you 
seem to me to love Felipe for your own sake, and not 
for his. There is truth in what your father said to 
you. The selfishness of the great lady is but masked 

236 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

by the blossoms of your early loves. Ah, child! if 
you were not so very dear to me, I could not tell you 
such cruel truths. Let me relate the close of one of 
our conversations, on condition that you never 
breathe a word of it to the Baron. We had been sing- 
ing your praises in every key, for he saw, of course, 
that I loved you as a beloved sister, and after having 
led him on to confide in me unconsciously, I said to 
him: 

" Louise has never yet had to struggle with life. 
Fate has treated her like a spoilt child, and perhaps 
she might grow unhappy, if you did not know how to 
be a father to her as well as a lover." 

" Ah! am I capable of that? " he said. 

He stopped short, like a man who sees the chasm 
into which he is about to slip. That exclamation was 
enough for me. If you had not departed, he would 
have told me more before many days were out. 

My dearest, when that man's strength is worn out, 
when enjoyment has brought satiety, when he begins 
to feel — I will not say degraded, but void of dignity, 
in your sight — the reproach of his own conscience 
will cause him a sort of remorse, which will wound 
you, inasmuch as you will feel that you yourself are 
guilty. And you will end by despising the husband 
whom you have not given yourself the habit of re- 
specting. Remember this, scorn is the first shape a 
woman's hatred takes. Because you are a noble- 
hearted woman, you will never forget the sacrifices 
Felipe has made for you. But there will be none left 

237 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

for him to make, once he has offered himself up, as 
it were, at this first banquet, and the man, like the 
woman, from whom nothing more is to be hoped, is 
doomed to misery. Now I have said my say. • 
Whether it be our glory or our shame, I know not, 
that is too delicate a point for me to settle, but the 
fact remains — it is only with regard to the man who 
loves her that a woman is exacting. 

Oh, Louise, change all this — there is still time! 
If you will treat Macumer as I treat l'Estorade, you 
will yet rouse the sleeping lion in a truly noble-hearted 
man. It seems to me as if you desired, at present, to 
avenge yourself for his superior excellence. But 
would you not be proud to use your power otherwise 
than for your own profit — to turn a great man into a 
man of genius, just as I am making a superior man 
out of an ordinary individual? 

Even if you had stayed with me here in the coun- 
try, I should still have written you this letter. I 
should have been afraid of your petulance and your 
wit, if we had talked the thing out together, whereas 
I know that when you read what I have written, you 
will consider your own future. Dear soul, you have 
every element of happiness; don't spoil it all. And 
pray get back to Paris early in November. The whirl 
and absorbing interest of society, of which I once 
complained, are necessary diversions in your exist- 
ence, the intimacy of which is perhaps almost too 
close. A married woman should have a coquetry of 
her own. The mother of a family who does not make 

238 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

her presence longed for by occasional disappearances 
from the bosom of her household, runs great risk of 
engendering satiety within it. If, as I devoutly hope 
for my own happiness, I have several children, I sol- 
emnly assure you that as soon as they have reached 
a certain age, I shall keep fixed hours entirely to my- 
self. For we must see to it that our company is 
sought by every one, even by our own children. Fare- 
well, dear jealous creature! Do you know that a 
vulgar-minded woman would have been flattered at 
the thought that she had stirred that jealous feeling 
in you. But it is nothing but a grief to me, for I 
have no feelings in my heart, save those of a mother, 
and of the truest friend. A thousand loves I send 
you. Say whatever you choose to account for your 
departure. If you are not certain of Felipe, I am quite 
certain of Louis. 



239 



XXXVII 

FROM THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE 
DE L'ESTORADE 

Genoa. 

My dear Love: The fancy took me to see some- 
thing of Italy, and I am delighted at having carried off 
Macumer, whose plans about Sardinia are put aside 
for a time. 

This country enchants and delights me. The 
churches, and above all the chapels, have an amorous 
and enticing look, which must make a Protestant 
long to turn Catholic. Attentions have been lavished 
on Macumer, and the King is delighted at having ac- 
quired such a subject. If he wishes it, Felipe might 
have the Sardinian embassy to Paris, for I am in high 
favour at Court. If you write to me, address your 
letter to Florence. I really have not time to write to 
you fully; I will tell you all about my journey the next 
time you come to Paris. We shall only stay here a 
week, then we go on to Florence by Leghorn, we 
shall spend a month in Tuscany, and another at 
Naples, so as to be at Rome in November. We shall 
return by Venice, where we shall be for the first fort- 
night in December, and then we shall get back to 
Paris by Milan and Turin, for the month of January. 

240 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

This is a real lovers' journey; the new. scenes through 
which we pass renew all our dear delights. Macu- 
mer had never seen Italy, and we began by that mag- 
nificent Corniche Road, which seems as if it had 
been built by fairies. Farewell, my darling! don't be 
angry with me for not writing. I cannot snatch a 
moment to myself while I am travelling — all my time 
is taken up in seeing and feeling, and enjoying my im- 
pressions. But I will wait till memory has coloured 
them before describing them to you. 



16 241 



XXXVIII 

FROM THE VICOMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO THE 
BARONNE DE MACUMER 

September. 

My Dear: A somewhat lengthy answer to the 
letter you wrote me from Marseilles is now lying 
at Chantepleurs. This lovers* journey of yours is 
so far from removing the fears therein expressed, 
that I beg you'll write and have my letter sent 
after you. 

We hear the Ministry has decided on a dissolution. 
This is a misfortune for the Crown, which was to have 
employed the last session of this loyal legislature in 
passing laws which were indispensable to the consoli- 
dation of its power. But it is one for us as well, for 
Louis will not be forty until the end of 1827. Luckily, 
my father, who has agreed to accept election, will re- 
sign at a convenient moment. 

Your godson has taken his first steps without his 
godmother's help. He is really magnificent, and he is 
beginning to make me little graceful gestures, which 
assure me he is no longer a mere thirsty being, and 
an animal existence, but a living soul. There is mean- 
ing even in his smiles. I have been so successful as a 

242 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

nurse that I shall wean our Armand in December. 
One year of nursing is enough — " Children who are 
nursed too long turn into fools." I have great faith 
in these popular proverbs. You must be desperately 
admired in Italy, my fair-haired beauty! A thousand 
loves to you! 



243 



XXXIX 

FROM THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE 
DE L'ESTORADE 

Rome, December. 
I have your wicked letter, which I desired my 
steward to send me from Chantepleurs. Oh, Renee! 
. . . but I spare you all the reproaches my indigna- 
tion might suggest. I will only recount the effect 
your letter has produced. When we came back from 
the beautiful party the Ambassador had given for us, 
at which I had shone in all my glory, and whence Ma- 
cumer had returned in an intoxication of adoration 
which I cannot describe to you, I read that horrible 
answer of yours to him — read it to him, weeping — 
though I risked seeming ugly in his eyes. My dear 
Abencerrage fell at my feet, and vowed you were talk- 
ing twaddle; he drew me on to the balcony of the pal- 
ace in which we are living, and which looks out over 
part of Rome, and his language was worthy of the 
scene spread out before our eyes — for it was a mag- 
nificent moonlight night. We have learnt Italian al- 
ready, and his love, expressed in that soft language, so 
appropriate to the passion, seemed to me utterly sub- 
lime. He told me that, even if you were a true 

244 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

prophet, he preferred a single night of happiness, or 
one of our exquisite mornings, to the whole of an ordi- 
nary life. Reckoning thus, he had lived a thousand 
years already. He desired I should remain his mis- 
tress, and sought no other title than that of my lover. 
So proud and happy is he, to see himself daily pre- 
ferred above all others, that if God were to appear be- 
fore him and to give him his choice between living an- 
other thirty years under your rules, and having five 
children, or only living five, with a continuance of all 
our dear and beautiful delights, he would make his 
choice — he would rather be loved as I love him, and 
then die. These ardent vows, which he whispered in 
my ear, my head resting on his shoulder, his arm about 
my waist, were suddenly disturbed by the scream of 
a bat overtaken by some owl. This death-cry affected 
me so painfully, that Felipe carried me half fainting to 
my bed. But calm your fears! Although the portent 
re-echoed through my soul, I am quite well this morn- 
ing. When I left my bed, I knelt down before Felipe, 
and with his eyes on mine, and my hands clasping 
his, I said: 

" My dearest, I am a foolish child, and Renee may 
be right. Perhaps the only thing I love in you is love. 
But be sure, at all events, that there is no other feeling 
in my heart, and that I love you after my own fashion. 
And if in my ways, in the smallest matters of my life 
and being, there is anything at all contrary to what 
you have desired or hoped of me, tell me, make it 
known to me. It will be my happiness to listen to 

245 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

you, and to be guided solely by the light of your eyes. 
Renee loves me so much that she terrifies me." 

Macumer could find no voice to answer me; he 
was in tears. And now, my Renee, I thank you. I 
did not know how much my beautiful, my kingly Ma- 
cumer does love me. Rome is the city of love. Those 
who have a passion should come here to enjoy it — the 
arts and Heaven will be their accomplices. We are 
to meet the Duque and Duquesa de Soria at Venice. 
If you write to me again, direct to Paris, for we leave 
Rome within three days. The Ambassador's party 
was to bid us farewell. 

P. S. — Silly darling, your letter is a clear proof that 
your sole acquaintance with love is theoretical. Let 
me tell you that love is a principle so various and dis- 
similar in its effects, that no theory can possibly em- 
brace or govern them. This for my little doctor in 
petticoats. 



246 



XL 



FROM THE COMTESSE DE L ESTORADE TO THE 
BARONNE DE MACUMER 

January, 1827. 

My father returned to Parliament. My father-in- 
law is dead, and I am on the brink of my second con- 
finement. These are the chief events of the close of 
this year. I mention them at once, so that the biack 
seal upon my letter may not alarm you long. 

My darling, your letter from Rome made me 
shudder. You are a pair of children. Either Felipe 
is a diplomat, who has deceived you, or a man who 
loves you as he would love a courtesan, to whom he 
would make over his whole fortune even though he 
knew her to be playing him false. But enough of all 
this. You think what I say is twaddle; I will hold my 
peace. But let me tell you that when I consider your 
fate and my own, the moral I draw is a cruel one. " If 
you desire to be loved, you must not fall in love your- 
self." 

Louis received the Cross of the Legion of Honour 
when he was appointed to the Conseil General. Now 
he has been on the Conseil for three years, and as my 
father, whom you will no doubt see in Paris, in the 

247 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

course of the session, has applied to have his son-in- 
law promoted to the rank of Officer, I will ask you 
to be so kind as to turn your attention to the func- 
tionary on whom the promotion depends, and see 
after this little business for me. And above all things, 
don't mix yourself up in the affairs of my much- 
revered father, the Comte de Maucombe, who wants 
a Marquisate for himself. Keep all your interest for 
me. When Louis is a Deputy — that will be next 
winter — we shall go to Paris, and we shall move 
heaven and earth to get him appointed to some per- 
manent board, so that we may put away all our own 
income and live on his salary. My father sits between 
the Centre and the Right. He doesn't ask for any- 
thing except a title. Our family was famous in the 
days of King Renee — King Charles X will never re- 
fuse the request of a Maucombe. But I'm afraid my 
father may take it into his head to solicit some favour 
for my second brother, and if he has a little trouble in 
getting his Marquisate, he will not be able to think 
about anything but himself. 

Ja7iuary 15th. 
Ah, Louise, I've been in hell! The only reason I 
dare to speak of what I have suffered to you is that 
you are my second self. And even so, I do not know 
whether I can ever let my thoughts go back to those 
five hideous days. Even the word " convulsions n 
sends a shudder to my very soul. Not five days, but 
five centuries, of torture have I endured! Until a 
mother has gone through that martyrdom, she will 

248 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

never know what suffering really means. You'll judge 
of my distraction when I tell you I have called you 
happy, because you have no child! 

The evening before the dreadful day, the weath- 
er, which had been heavy and almost hot, seemed to 
me to be disagreeing with my little Armand. He 
was peevish, quite unlike his usual sweet and coaxing 
self. He screamed about everything. He tried to 
play, and broke his toys. Perhaps this disturbance of 
the temper is always the precursor of illness in young 
children. My attention having been attracted by his 
unusual naughtiness, I noticed he had alternate fits 
of flushing and pallor, which I ascribed to the fact 
that he was cutting four large teeth at once. So I 
had him to sleep close by me, and kept waking up to 
look at him. He was a little feverish in the night, 
but this did not alarm me in the least. I still thought 
it all came from his teeth. Towards morning he 
called " Mamma," and made me a sign that he was 
thirsty. But there was a shrillness in his voice, and 
something convulsive about his gesture, that froze 
my blood. I jumped out of bed to get him some 
water. Conceive my terror when I brought him the 
cup and found he didn't move. Only he kept saying 
" Mamma " in that voice that wasn't his voice — that 
wasn't even a voice at all. I took his hand, but it 
didn't answer to mine, it stiffened. I put the glass 
to his lips. The poor little fellow drank, but in the 
most alarming manner, taking three or four convul- 
sive gulps, and the water made a queer noise in his 

249 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

throat. Suddenly he clutched desperately at me. I 
saw his eye-balls turn, drawn up by some internal 
pressure, and his limbs lost all their flexibility. I 
screamed wildly. Louis came. 

" A doctor! A doctor! " I shrieked, " he's dying." 
Louis was off like a flash, and my poor Armand 
clung to me again, crying " Mamma! Mamma! " In 
another moment he was quite unconscious that he 
even had a mother. The veins on his pretty forehead 
swelled out, and the convulsions came on. For an 
hour before the doctors came, that lively child, so 
pink and white, that blossom which had lately been 
my pride and joy, lay in my arms as stiff and stark as 
a log of wood. And oh, his eyes! the very thought of 
them makes me shudder. Black and shrivelled, drawn 
and dumb, my pretty boy was like nothing but a 
mummy. First one doctor, and then two, fetched by 
Louis from Marseilles, stood over him, like birds of 
evil omen. The very sight of them made me shiver. 
One said it was a brain fever. The other said it was a 
case of infantile convulsions. Our village man seemed 
to me the most sensible, for he didn't prescribe any- 
thing. "His teeth," said the second; "fever," said 
the first. At last they agreed to put leeches on his 
neck, and ice upon his head. I thought I should have 
died. To sit there and gaze at a bluish-blackish 
corpse, that never moved or spoke, in place of that 
gay, lively little creature! At one moment I quite 
lost my head, and a sort of nervous laughter seized 
me when I saw the leeches fasten on the pretty neck I 

250 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

had so often kissed, and the darling head under an ice- 
cap. My dear, we had to cut off the pretty hair we 
used to admire so much, and that you had fondled, so 
as to apply the ice. The convulsions returned every 
ten minutes, just like the pains with which I bore him, 
and the poor little fellow struggled afresh, some- 
times deadly pale, and then again purple in the face. 
Whenever his limbs, generally so flexible, touched 
each other, they gave out a sort of wooden sound. 
And that senseless creature had once smiled to me, 
and kissed me, and called me " Mother." A flood of 
agony surged over my soul at the thought, tossing it 
even as tempests toss the sea, and I felt a wrench at 
every cord that binds the child to the mother's heart. 
My own mother, who might have helped, advised, or 
consoled me, is in Paris. Mothers understand more 
about convulsions, I think, than any doctor. After 
four days and nights of ups and downs, and terrors, 
which almost killed me, the doctors all decided it 
would be better to apply some horrible ointment to 
blister the skin. Oh, sores on my Armand, who had 
been playing about only five days before, and laugh- 
ing, and trying to say " Godmother! " I objected, 
and said I would trust to Nature. Louis scolded me, 
he believed the doctors — men are all alike. But at 
certain moments dreadful maladies like these take the 
form of death itself, and at one of these moments the 
remedy, the very thought of which had been an abom- 
ination in my sight, seemed to promise me Armand's 
salvation. My dearest Louise, his skin was so dry, 

251 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

so hard, so burnt up, that the ointment took no effect. 
Then I began to cry, and I wept so long over his bed 
that the pillow was all soaked. As for the doctors, 
they were at their dinner. Seeing I was alone I 
stripped all the medical appliances off my boy. Half 
wild as I was, I took him up into my arms, I strained 
him to my breast, I pressed my forehead to his, and 
I prayed to God to give him my own life which I 
strove to breathe into him. I had been holding him 
thus for several minutes, longing to die with him, so 
that neither death nor life might part us. My dear, I 
felt his limbs relax, the convulsions passed off, the 
child moved, the dreadful, hideous colour changed, I 
screamed, as I had screamed when he first fell ill. The 
doctors ran upstairs. I showed them my boy. 

" He's saved! " cried the elder of the two. 

Oh, those words! what music there was in them! 
Heaven opened to my sight. And indeed, two hours 
later, Armand was a new creature. But as for me, I 
was broken down, and nothing but the elixir of hap- 
piness saved me from being very ill. O my God! 
by what anguish dost thou bind the mother to her 
child! What nails thou drivest into her heart to hold 
him safely there! Was not maternal love passionate 
enough already in me, who wept with joy over my 
boy's first lispings and his baby-step, who watch him 
for hours together, so that I may do my duty well, 
and learn all the sweet business of a mother's life? 
Were all these terrors and these frightful sights 
needful for a woman who has made her child her idol? 

2^2 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

As I sit writing to you, Armand is playing about, 
shouting and laughing. Then I ponder the causes of 
this horrible complaint, remembering that I am about 
to bear another child. Is it the result of teething? 
Is it caused by some particular condition of the brain? 
Is there something faulty in the nervous system of 
children who suffer from convulsions? All these 
ideas alarm me, as much for the present as for the 
future. Our country doctor declares it is a nerv- 
ous excitement caused by teething. I would give all 
my teeth to know those of our little Armand safely 
through. Every time I see one of those little white 
pearls peeping through the middle of his hot red gum, 
I feel a cold perspiration break out all over me. The 
heroic manner in which the poor little angel bears his 
sufferings shows me his nature will be just like mine; 
he cast the most heart-rending glances at me. Medi- 
cal science knows very little of the causes of this 
species of tetanus, which disappears as swiftly as it 
comes, and can neither be foreseen nor cured. I tell 
you again, one thing alone is certain — that to see her 
child in convulsions is hell to any mother. How furi- 
ously I kiss him now! How long and closely I hold 
him when I carry him about ! To have to endure such 
anguish when I am to be confined again within six 
weeks was a hideous aggravation of my martyrdom. 
I was terrified for the other child. Farewell, my dear 
and much loved Louise! Don't wish for children! — 
that is my last word to you! 



253 



XLI 

FROM THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE 
DE L'ESTORADE 

Paris. 

Poor Darling: We forgave your horridness, 
Macumer and I, when we heard how dreadfully you 
had been tried. I shuddered, and it was anguish to 
me to read the details of that double torture. I am 
less unhappy now at having no child. I lose no time 
in telling you that Louis is appointed Officer of the 
Legion of Honour, and may forthwith sport his ro- 
sette. You wish for a little girl, and you will prob- 
ably have one, lucky Renee! My brother's marriage 
with Mile, de Mortsauf took place on our return. 
Our dear King, who really is most exquisitely kind, 
has granted my brother the succession to the post of 
First Lord of the Bedchamber, which his father-in- 
law now holds. 

" The office must go with the title," said he to the 
Due de Lenoncourt-Givry. The only thing he has 
insisted on is that the Mortsauf escutcheon should be 
impaled with that of the Lenoncourt. 

My father was right, a hundred times over. But 
for my fortune, none of these things could have taken 

254 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

place. My father and mother came from Madrid for 
the wedding, and are going back there after the party, 
which I am giving for the young couple to-morrow. 
The carnival will be very gay. The Duque and 
Duquesa de Soria are in Paris. Their presence here 
disturbs me a little. Maria Heredia is certainly one 
of the most beautiful women in Europe, and I don't 
like the way in which Felipe looks at her. So I have 
redoubled my love and tenderness. " She would 
never have loved you as I do," is a sentence I take 
good care not to utter, but it is written on all my 
looks and in everything I do. Never was coquette 
more elegant than I. Yesterday Mme. de Maufrig- 
neuse said to me, " Dear child, we must all lay down 
our arms to you! " 

And then I amuse Felipe so much that he must 
think his sister-in-law as stupid as a Spanish cow. I 
am all the more consoled at not being the mother of 
a little Abencerrage, because the Duchesse will most 
probably be confined in Paris, and so she'll grow ugly. 
If she has a son it is to be called Felipe, in honour of 
the exile — and spiteful Chance will make me a god- 
mother once more. Farewell, my dearest ! I shall go 
to Chantepleurs early this year, for our journey has cost 
something outrageous. I shall depart towards the end 
of March, so as to economize by living in the Niver- 
nais. And besides, Paris bores me, and Felipe sighs 
as much as I do for the delightful solitude of our park, 
for our cool meadows, and our Loire, with its shim- 
mering sands, so different from any other river in the 

255 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

world. Chantepleurs seems delightful, after all the 
pomps and vanities of Italy; for, after all, magnifi- 
cence is wearisome, and one lover's glance is better 
than any Capo oVOpcra or bcl quadro. We shall ex- 
pect you there. I won't be jealous of you any more. 
You can sound my Macumer's heart, just as you 
please. You can fish out interjections, and wake up 
scruples — I make him over to you with the most su- 
perb confidence. Since that scene at Rome, Felipe 
loves me more passionately than ever. He told me 
yesterday (he is looking over my shoulder) that his 
sister-in-law, the Maria of his youth, his former fiancee, 
the Princess Heredia, his first dream, zvas dull. Ah, 
dear, I'm worse than any opera-dancer — the slander 
delighted me. I've pointed out to Felipe that she 
doesn't speak good French — she says " esemple " for 
" exemple," " sain " for " cinq," " cheu " for " jeu." 
She is handsome, indeed, but she has no grace, nor 
the smallest liveliness of intellect. If any one pays 
her a compliment, she stares like a woman who has 
never been in the habit of hearing such things. With 
Felipe's nature, he would have left her before he had 
been two months married to her. She suits the 
Duque de Soria, Don Fernando, very well. He is a 
generous-minded man, but an evident spoilt child. I 
might be spiteful and set you laughing, but I confine 
myself to the truth. A thousand loves, my dearest 
one! 



256 



XLII 

FROM RENEE TO LOUISE 

My little daughter is two months old. My moth- 
er stood godmother to the little creature, and an old 
great-uncle of Louis's was her godfather. Her names 
are Jeanne Athenais. 

As soon as I can get away, I will start to join 
you at Chantepleurs, since you don't object to having 
a nursing mother. Your godson can say your name 
now, he pronounces it Matoumer, for he can't say his 
c's properly. You'll dote upon him. He has cut all 
his teeth, he eats like a big boy; he runs and trots 
about like a weasel. But I still keep an anxious eye 
on him, and I am in despair at not being able to have 
him with me during my recovery, which necessitates 
my keeping my room for more than two months, ow- 
ing to certain precautions on which the doctors insist. 
Alas! my love, custom doesn't make child-bearing any 
easier. The same anguish and the same terrors have 
to be faced each time. Notwithstanding that (don't 
show this letter to Felipe) this little daughter has 
something of my looks. She may eclipse your Ar- 
mand yet. 

17 257 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

My father thought Felipe had grown thin, and my 
darling looking a little thinner too. Yet the Sorias 
have left Paris, so there cannot be the smallest occa- 
sion for jealousy now. Are you hiding some sorrow 
from me? Your last letter was neither so long nor so 
affectionate in thought as your former one. Is that 
only one of my whimsical darling's whims? 

I have written too much. My nurse is scolding me 
for having written at all, and Mile. Athenais de l'Es- 
torade is screaming for her dinner. Farewell, then. 
Write me good long letters. 



258 



XLIII 

MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE 

For the first time in my life, my dearest Renee, I 
have sat crying alone on a wooden bench under a 
willow tree, beside my lake at Chantepleurs — a lovely 
spot to which you'll soon add fresh beauties, for the 
only thing lacking to it is merry children's voices. 

Thinking of your fruitful motherhood, a sudden 
revulsion of feeling has swept over me, who am child- 
less still, after nearly three years of married life. 
" Oh," I mused, " even though I suffer a hundred 
times more cruelly than Renee suffered when my god- 
son was born, even though I should end by seeing my 
child in convulsions, grant, O my God, that I may 
bear an angel baby like that little Athenais, who, I 
can feel it, is as lovely as the day." For you didn't 
say a word about that, it was just like you, my Renee! 
You seem to have guessed I am unhappy. Every 
time my hopes are disappointed, I spend several days 
in the blackest melancholy. So there I sat compos- 
ing gloomy elegies. When shall I embroider little 
caps and choose fine lawn for babies' gowns? When 
shall I sew dainty laces to cover a tiny head? Am I 

259 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

never to hear one of those darling creatures call me 
" Mother," and feel it pull at my skirt and lord it over 
me? Shall I never see the marks of a little carriage 
upon the gravel path? Shall I never pick up broken 
toys in my court-yard? Shall I never go to the toy- 
shop like the many mothers I have seen, to buy swords 
and dolls, and baby-houses? Shall I never watch the 
growth of a life and being that will be another and a 
dearer Felipe? I want a son, so that I may find out 
how a woman may love her lover better than ever in 
his other self. My house and park seem cold and de- 
serted. Oh, my doctor in petticoats that you are, 
your view of life is true. And besides, sterility in any 
form is a horrible thing. My life is rather too like 
that in Gessner's and Florian's pastorals, of which 
Rivarol used to say that " one was driven to sigh for 
wolves." I, as well as you, want to devote myself to 
others. I feel I have powers in me which Felipe over- 
looks, and if I am not to have a child, I shall have to 
treat myself to a misfortune of some kind. This is 
what I have just been saying to my remnant of the 
Moors, and my words brought tears into his eyes. 
He got off with being told he was a noble-hearted 
silly. It doesn't do to jest with him about his love. 
Now and then I long to go and say Novenas, to 
appeal to special Madonnas, or try special waters. I 
shall certainly consult physicians next winter. I am 
too furious with myself to say more about it to you. 
Farewell! 



260 



XLIV 

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME 

Paris, i82g. 
How's this, my dear? A whole year without a 
letter from you. ... I am rather hurt. Do you 
fancy that your Louis, who comes to see me almost 
every second day, can fill your place? It isn't enough 
for me to know that you are not ill, and that your 
business matters are doing well. I want to know your 
thoughts and feelings, just as I send you mine, and 
risk being scolded or blamed, or misunderstood, just 
because I love you. This silence of yours, and your 
retirement in the country, when you might be here, 
enjoying the Comte de l'Estorade's parliamentary tri- 
umphs — his constant speeches and his devotion to 
his duties have gained him considerable influence, and 
he'll no doubt rise to a very high position when the 
session closes — cause me serious alarm. Do you 
spend your whole life writing him instructions? 
Numa was not so widely parted from his Egeria. Why 
haven't you seized this opportunity of seeing Paris? 
I should have had your company for four whole 
months. Yesterday your husband informed me you 
were coming up to fetch him, and that your third 

261 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

confinement (indefatigable parent) was to take place 
here. After endless questions, sighs, and groans, 
Louis, diplomatic though he is, ended by telling me 
that his great-uncle, Athenais's godfather, is in a very 
bad way. And I conclude you capable, like the good 
mother you are, of turning the Deputy's speeches and 
his fame to account, to coax some handsome legacy 
out of your husband's sole surviving relative on his 
mother's side. Make your mind easy, my Renee. 
The Lenoncourts, the Chaulieus, all Mme. de Ma- 
cumer's circle, are working for Louis. There is no 
doubt Martignac will send him to the Audit Office. 
But if you don't tell me why you are staying on in 
the country, I shall lose my temper. Is it so that 
nobody may suspect you of guiding the whole policy 
of the House of l'Estorade? Is it because of the 
old uncle's will? Are you afraid you may be a less 
devoted mother in Paris? Oh, how I should like to 
know whether it is that you don't choose to make your 
first appearance here in your present condition. Is it 
that, you vain creature? Good-bye. 



262 



XLV 

FROM RENEE TO LOUISE 

You complain of my silence? Why, you forget 
the two little dark heads I have to rule and which 
rule over me. And, indeed, you have hit on some of 
the reasons that keep me at home. Apart from the 
state of the old great-uncle's health, I did not care, 
in my present condition, to drag a boy of four and a 
little girl of nearly three up to Paris; I wouldn't com- 
plicate your existence and burden your house with 
such a party. I don't care to appear at a disadvantage 
in the brilliant society over which you hold sway; and 
I have a horror both of furnished lodgings and of 
hotel life. When Louis's great-uncle heard the news 
of his great-nephew's appointment, he made me a 
present of two hundred thousand francs, half his sav- 
ings, with which to buy a house in Paris, and I have 
commissioned Louis to find one, in your neighbour- 
hood. My mother has given me thirty thousand 
francs to pay for the furniture. When I settle in Paris 
for the session, I shall go to my own house, and I shall 
try to be worthy of my dear " sister by election " — 
I say it without any intention of making a pun. I am 

263 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

grateful to you for having obtained so much favour 
for Louis. But in spite of the esteem in which he is 
held by MM. de Bourmont and de Polignac, who wish 
him to take office under them, I do not care to see him 
in such a prominent position. That is far too compro- 
mising. I prefer the Audit Office on account of its 
being a permanency. Our business here will be in 
very good hands, and once our steward has thorough- 
ly mastered his work, I shall come and support Louis 
— you may be quite easy about that. 

As for writing you long letters at present, how am 
I to do it? This one, in which I should like to give 
you a description of the ordinary tenor of one of my 
days, will have to lie on my writing-table for a week. 
It may be turned into tents for Armand's toy sol- 
diers, set out in rows upon my floor, or into ships 
for the navy he sails upon his bath. One single day's 
work will be enough for you; and, indeed, my days are 
all alike, and only two facts affect them — whether the 
children are out of sorts, or well. Literally, in this 
quiet country-house, the hours are minutes, or the 
minutes hours, according to the- children's state of 
health. My few exquisite respites are when they are 
asleep, when I am not rocking one, or telling stories 
to the other, to make them drowsy. Once I feel I 
have them both sound asleep close to me, I say to my- 
self, " Now I have nothing more to fear." For really, 
my darling, as long as daylight lasts, a mother is al- 
ways inventing some danger the moment her children 
are out of her sight. I think Armand is trying to play 

264 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

with stolen razors, I fancy his jacket has caught fire, 
that he has been bitten by a blind-worm, that he has 
tumbled down and cut his head, or drowned himself 
in one of the ponds. Motherhood, as you see, gives 
birth to a succession of poetic fancies, some sweet, 
some hideous. Not an hour but brings its terrors or 
its joys. But alone in my room, at night, comes the 
hour of my waking dreams, when I plan out all their 
future life, and see it lighted by the smiles of the an- 
gels I behold hovering above their pillows. Some- 
times Armand will call me in his sleep. Then I kiss 
his unconscious forehead, and his little sister's feet, 
and gaze at their childish beauty. Those instants 
are my festivals. I'm certain it was our guardian 
angel who inspired me, in the middle of last night, 
to run in a fright to Athenais's cradle, where I found 
her lying with her head much too low, while Armand 
had kicked all his coverings off, so that his feet were 
blue with cold. 

" Oh, mother darling! " he said, as he woke and 
kissed me. 

There's a night scene for you, my dear! 

How necessary it is for a mother to keep her chil- 
dren near her! Can any nurse, however good she 
may be, take them up and comfort them, and hush 
them to rest again, when they have been startled out 
of their sleep by some hideous nightmare? For chil- 
dren have their dreams, and it is all the more difficult 
to explain one of these dreadful dreams to them, be- 
cause the child that listens to his mother at such a 

265 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

moment, is drowsy, scared, shrewd and simple, all at 
once — an organ pause, as it were, between his two 
slumbers. And I have learnt to sleep so lightly that I 
see my two little ones and hear them through my 
closed eye-lids. A sigh, even a turn in bed, awakes 
me. I see convulsions perpetually crouching like a 
cruel monster at the foot of their couch. 

When daylight comes, my children begin to chirp 
with the earliest birds. I can hear them through my 
morning sleep. Their chatter is like the twitter of 
fighting swallows, merry or plaintive little chirpings, 
that reach me more through my heart than through 
my ears. While Nais does her best to get to me by 
crawling on her hands and knees, or toddling from 
her cot to my bed, Armand climbs up to kiss me, as 
nimble as a monkey. Then the two little creatures 
make my bed into their playground, on which their 
mother is at their mercy. The little maid pulls my 
hair, she still tries to find my breast, and Armand de- 
fends it as if it were his private property. I can never 
resist certain attitudes, and the peals of laughter that 
go off like rockets, and always end by chasing sleep 
away. Then we play at ogres, and the mother ogress 
devours the soft white baby skins, and kisses the 
merry roguish eyes and tender pink shoulders, till 
there is almost nothing left of them — and this, every 
now and then, results in the most fascinating fits of 
childish jealousy. Some days I take up my stock- 
ing at eight o'clock, and when nine o'clock strikes I 
have only contrived to put one on. 

266 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

But up I get at last, and dressing begins. I put 
on my wrapper, turn up my sleeves, tie on my water- 
proof apron, and with Mary's help I give my two little 
darlings their bath. I am sole judge of the heat or 
coolness of the water — for that matter of the tempera- 
ture of the bath is the cause of half the screaming 
and crying among children. Then out come the pa- 
per boats and the china ducks. The children must be 
kept amused if they are to be properly washed. If 
you only knew what games have to be invented to 
please these absolute monarchs, if one is to get one's 
soft sponge over every corner of their small persons! 
You would be quite startled by the amount of clever- 
ness and cunning a mother must employ if she is to 
carry her work to a glorious conclusion. Supplica- 
tion, scoldings, promises, she needs them all, and her 
knavery grows all the more skilful because it must 
be so cunningly concealed. I don't know what would 
happen if God had not given the mother shrewdness 
to outwit the child's. A child is a wily politician, and 
he must be mastered, just like your great politician — 
through his passions. Fortunately, everything makes 
the little angels laugh. Whenever a brush tumbles 
down, or a cake of soap slips away, there are shrieks 
of delight. Well if all these triumphs are dearly 
bought, at all events they do exist. But God alone 
— for the father himself knows nothing of it — God 
alone, or the angels, or you yourself, can understand 
the glances I exchange with Mary when the two little 
creatures are dressed, and we see them all neat and 

267 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

clean amid the soap, and sponges, and combs, and 
basins, and flannels, and all the thousand impedimenta 
of an English nursery. I have grown quite English 
on this point. I acknowledge that English women 
have a genius for bringing up children. Although 
they only consider the child's material and physical 
comfort, there is sense in all the improvements they 
have introduced. Therefore my children shall always 
have warm feet and bare legs, they shall never be 
tightened or compressed — but then again they shall 
never be left alone. The French child's bondage in his 
swaddling-clothes means the freedom of his nurse, and 
that explains it all. No good mother can be free, and 
that is why I don't write to you — for I have to manage 
this place, and to bring up two children. The science 
of motherhood involves much silent well-doing, un- 
seen and unpretending, much virtue applied to small 
things, a fund of never-failing devotion. Even the 
broths that are being made at the fire must be watched 
— why, you don't think I would shuffle out of any of 
these little cares? The least of them brings in its 
own harvest of affection. Oh, how good it is to see 
a child smile when he likes his dinner! Armand has a 
way of wagging his little head, which is better than a 
whole passion of love to me. How I can allow an- 
other woman the right, the care, the pleasure, of 
blowing on a spoonful of soup which is too hot for 
Nais, whom I only weaned seven months ago, and 
who still remembers her mother's breast? When a 
nurse has burnt a child's tongue and lips, by giving 

268 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

it something too hot, she just tells the mother it is 
crying because it is hungry. But how can any mother 
sleep in peace when she thinks that an impure breath 
may have passed over the food her child swallows, 
and remembers that Nature does not permit of any in- 
terposition between her own breast and her nursling's 
lips? It is a work of patience to cut up a cutlet for 
Nais, whose last teeth are just coming through, and to 
mix up the carefully cooked meat with potatoes, and 
really, in certain cases, no one but a mother knows 
how to make an impatient child eat up the whole of 
its food. Therefore no mother, even though she 
have a numerous household and an English nurse, 
can be excused from taking her personal share of duty 
on this battlefield, where gentleness must wage war 
against the little griefs and sufferings of childhood. 
Why, Louise, one's whole heart must be in one's 
care of the dear innocents! No evidence must be 
trusted save that of one's own eye and hand as to their 
dress, their food, and their sleeping arrangements. 
As a general principle a child's cry, unless caused by 
some suffering imposed by Nature, argues a short- 
coming on the part of the mother or the nurse. Now 
that I have two children to look after, and shall soon 
have three, there is no room in my soul for any- 
thing else, and even you, dearly as I love you, are only 
a memory. I am not always dressed by two o'clock 
in the day! And I have no faith in mothers whose 
rooms are always tidy, and whose collars and gowns 
and fallals are always neat. Yesterday, one of our first 

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April days, the weather was lovely, and I wanted to 
take the children out before my confinement, which 
is close upon me. Well, to a mother, the taking of the 
children out is a perfect poem, and she looks forward 
to it from one day to the next. Armand was to wear 
a new black velvet coat, a new collar which I had 
embroidered for him, a Scotch cap with the Stuart 
colours, and a black cock's feather. Nais was to be 
dressed in white and pink, and a delightful baby bon- 
net. She is still the baby — she'll lose that pretty 
title when the little fellow whom I call "my pauper," 
for he'll be the second son, makes his appearance. I 
have seen my child already in a dream, and I know I 
shall have a boy. Caps, collars, coats, little stock- 
ings, tiny shoes, pink ribbons, silk-embroidered muslin 
frock, were all laid out upon my bed. When these 
two gay little birds who are so happy together, had 
had their dark hair, curled, for the boy, and brushed 
gently forward so as to peep out under the pink and 
white bonnet, for the girl; when their shoes had been 
fastened, when the little bare calves and neatly shod 
feet had trotted about the nursery, when those two 
" faces clcancs " (as Mary calls it in her limpid 
French!) and those sparkling eyes said to me, " Let 
us be off! " my heart throbbed. Oh, to see one's chil- 
dren dressed up by one's own hands, the beauty of 
their fresh skins, on which the blue veins shine out 
after one has washed and sponged and dried them, 
heightened by the brilliant colours of the velvet or 
the silk! — that's better than any poetry. With what 

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hungry passion one calls them back to press fresh 
kisses upon their necks that look fairer in their simple 
collars than the loveliest woman's! Every day do I 
paint pictures such as these, which every mother 
pauses to admire, even in the commonest coloured 
lithograph. 

When we were out of doors, while I was enjoying 
the fruit of my labours and admiring my little Ar- 
mand, who looked like a prince of the blood royal as 
he led the baby along the narrow road you know so 
well, a wagon came in sight. I tried to pull them out 
of the way, the two children tumbled into a puddle, 
and so ensued the ruin of my master-pieces. We had 
to take them home, and dress them over again. I 
picked my little girl up in my arms, never noticing 
that I had spoilt my dress by doing it; Mary laid 
hands on Armand, and so we got back home. When 
a baby cries, and a boy gets wet, there's an end of 
everything — a mother never gives herself another 
thought, they are absorbed elsewhere. 

As a rule, when dinner-time comes, I have got 
nothing done at all. And how am I to manage to help 
them both, to pin on their napkins and turn up their 
cuffs, and feed them? This problem I solve twice 
in every day. Amid these never-ending cares, these 
joys and these disasters, the only person forgot- 
ten in the house is me. Often, if the children are 
naughty, I haven't time to take out my curl-papers. 
My appearance depends upon their temper. To get 
a moment to myself so as to write you these six pages, 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

I have to let them cut out the pictures on my bal- 
lads and build castles with books or chess-men or 
mother-o'-pearl counters; or else Nais must wind my 
silks and wools after her own method — a method so 
complicated, I can assure you, that she turns all her 
little mind to it, and never says a word. 

After all, I have nothing to complain of. My two 
children are healthy and fearless, and amuse them- 
selves with less trouble to others than you would 
think. Everything is a delight to them. They really 
need a well-ordered freedom more than toys. A hand- 
ful of pebbles, pink and yellow, purple or black, a few 
little shells, and all the wonders of the sand, make 
them quite happy. To them wealth consists in the 
possession of a large number of small things. I watch 
Armand, and I find him talking to the birds, and the 
flies, and the cocks and hens, and imitating them all. 
He is on excellent terms with the insect world, for 
which he has the greatest admiration. Everything 
that is tiny interests him. He begins to ask me the 
why of everything. He has just been to see what I 
was saying to his godmother. Indeed he looks on 
you as a fairy — and see how right children always are! 

Alas! my dearest, I had not intended to sadden 
you, by telling you of all these joys. This story will 
give you an idea of your godson. The other day, a 
beggar followed us — for the poor know that no moth- 
er who has a child with her will ever refuse them alms. 
Armand has no idea as yet of what it means to go 
hungry; he doesn't know what money is, but as he 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

had just asked for a trumpet, and I had bought it for 
him, he held it out to the old man, with a regal air, 
saying, " Here, take it! " 

" Have I your leave to keep it? " said the beggar 
to me. 

Can anything on earth be compared with the joy 
of such a moment? 

" For you see, madame, I have had children of my 
own/' added the old fellow, as he took what I gave 
him without even looking at the coin. 

When I think that such a child as Armand must 
be sent to school, when I think that I shall only be 
able to keep him for another three years and a half — 
I feel a shiver creep over me. State education will 
mow down the flowers of his blessed childhood, will 
pervert all his charm and his exquisite frankness. 
They will cut off his curly hair, that I have washed 
and brushed and kissed so often. What will they do 
with my Armand's heart? 

And what are you doing all this time? You've 
told me nothing at all about your life. Do you still 
love Felipe? — for I have no anxiety about the Sara- 
cen. Farewell! Nais has just tumbled down, and be- 
sides, if I were to go on, this letter would grow into a 
volume. 



18 273 



XLVI 

from mme. de macumer to the comtesse de 
l'estorade 

182Q. 

My dear loving-hearted Renee: The news of 
the horrible misfortune that has fallen on me will 
have reached you through the newspapers. I have 
never been able to write a single word to you. For 
twenty days and nights I watched by his bed, I re- 
ceived his last breath, I closed his eyes, I knelt pious- 
ly beside his corpse, with the priest, and I recited 
the prayers for the dead. All this dreadful suffering I 
imposed on myself as a chastisement. And yet, when 
I saw the smile he gave me just before he died still 
lying on his calm lips, I could not believe that it was 
my love that had killed him. Well, he is no more, and 
/ live on. What more can I say to you, who have 
known us both so well? Everything is contained in 
these two sentences. Oh, if any one could tell me he 
might be recalled to life, I would give my hopes of 
heaven to hear the promise, for it would be heaven 
to see him again. To lay my hand on him even for 
two seconds, would be to breathe without a dagger 
in my heart. Won't you come to me soon and tell 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

me that? Don't you love me enough to tell me a lie? 
. . . But no, long ago you warned me I was inflicting 
cruel wounds upon him ... is it true? . . . No, I 
never deserved his love — you are quite right — I 
cheated him, I strangled happiness in my wild em- 
brace. Oh, I am not wild now, as I write to you. But 
I feel that I am all alone. God! is there anything in 
hell more awful than that one word? 

When they took him away from me, I laid myself 
down in his bed and I hoped I might have died. 
There was nothing but a door between us. I thought 
I was strong enough still to break it down. But I 
was too young, alas ! and now after two months, during 
which a hateful skill has used every artifice known to 
dreary science to nurse me back to life, I find myself 
in the country, sitting at my window, among the flow- 
ers he had grown for me, enjoying the splendid view 
over which his eyes have often wandered, and which 
he was so proud of having discovered, because 
I loved it. Ah, dearest, it is extraordinary how it 
hurts one to move from place to place when one's 
heart is dead. The damp soil of my garden gives 
me a shudder. The earth is like one great grave, 
and I fancy I am treading on him. The first time 
I went out, I stopped in a fright, and stood quite 
still. It is very dreary to look at his flowers with- 
out him. 

My parents are in Spain; you know what my 
brothers are; and you are obliged to be in the coun- 
try. But let not that distress you. Two angels flew 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

at once to my relief. Those kind creatures, the 
Duque and Duquesa de Soria, hastened to their broth- 
er's sick-bed. The last few nights saw us all three, 
gathered in calm and silent sorrow, round the bed on 
which one of those truly great and noble men, so rare 
and so far above us in all things, lay dying. My Fe- 
lipe's patience was angelic. The sight of his brother 
and Maria cheered his heart for a moment and soft- 
ened his sufferings. 

" Dear," he said to me, in the simple way which 
was so peculiarly his own, " I was very nearly dying 
without leaving my Barony of Macumer to Fernando. 
I must alter my will. My brother will forgive me — 
he knows what it is to be in love." 

I owe my life to the care of my brother and sister- 
in-law. They want to take me away to Spain with 
them. 

Ah, Renee, I can't express the extent of my mis- 
fortune to anybody but you. I am overwhelmed by 
the sense of my own wrong-doing, and it is a bitter 
comfort to me to acknowledge it to you, my poor 
despised Cassandra. I have killed him with my un- 
reasonableness, my ill-founded jealousy, my perpetual 
tormenting. My love was all the more fatal because 
we were both of us equally and exquisitely sensitive, 
we spoke the same language, his comprehension was 
perfect, and very often, without my suspecting it, my 
jests cut him to the very heart. You would never 
conceive the point to which that dear slave carried his 
obedience. Sometimes I would tell him to go away 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

and leave me alone. He would go at once, without 
ever discussing a whim which quite possibly pained 
him. Till his very last breath he blessed me, saying 
over and over again that one forenoon spent alone 
with me was worth more to him than a long life spent 
with any other woman he might have loved, even 
were it Maria Heredia. My tears are falling while I 
write these words to you. 

Now I get up at noon, I go to bed at seven; I 
dawdle absurdly over my meals, I walk slowly, I stop 
for an hour in front of one plant, I stare at the foliage, 
I busy myself solemnly and regularly over trifles. I 
love the shade and the silence and the night. I wage 
war with every hour, in short, and take a gloomy 
pleasure in adding it to my past. The peace of my own 
grounds is the only company I can endure. In every- 
thing around me, I can read some noble image of my 
dead happiness, invisible to other eyes, but clear and 
eloquent to mine. 

My sister-in-law 7 clasped her arms round me, when 
I said to her one day: 

" I can't endure you. There is something nobler 
in your Spanish hearts than in ours." 

Ah, Renee, if I'm not dead, it must be because 
God apportions the sense of misery to the strength of 
those who have to bear it. It is only women such as 
we who are able to realize the extent of our loss, 
when we are bereft of a love that knows no hypocrisy 
— the best of loves, a lasting passion, that satisfied na- 
ture and heart at once. How often does one meet a 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

man whose qualities are so great that a woman can 
love him without degrading herself? Such an expe- 
rience is the greatest happiness that any woman can 
know, and no woman is likely to come upon it twice. 
Men who are really great and strong — men who can 
cast a halo of poetry over virtue — men whose souls ex- 
ert a mighty charm, men who are born to be adored — 
should never love, for they will bring calamity on the 
women they love, and on themselves. This is my 
cry as I wander along my woodland paths. And I 
have no child of his! That inexhaustible love which 
always had a smile for me, which poured out nothing 
but blossoms and delights for me, was barren. There 
is some curse upon me. Can it be that love, when it 
is pure and fierce, as it must be when it is complete, 
is as unfruitful as aversion — just as the excessive heat 
of the desert sands, and the excessive cold of the polar 
ice, both preclude the existence of life? Must a 
woman marry a Louis de l'Estorade, if she is to be 
the mother of children? Is God jealous of Love? I 
am beginning to rave. 

I think you are the only person I can bear to 
have with me. So come to me; you alone must be 
with a mourning Louise. What an awful day that 
was when I first put on a widow's cap! When I saw 
myself in my black dress, I dropped down on a chair, 
and cried till dark. I am crying again now, as I tell 
you of that dreadful moment. 

Farewell! writing to you tires me. I am sick of 
my thoughts; I won't go on putting them into words. . 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Bring your children. You can nurse the youngest 
here. I shall not be jealous any more. He is gone, 
and I shall be very glad to see my godson — for Felipe 
longed to have a child like little Armand. Come 
then, and share my sorrows with me! . . . 



279 



XLVII 

FROM RENEE TO LOUISE 

My Darling: When this letter reaches your 
hands I shall not be far away, for I start a few mo- 
ments after sending it to you. We shall be alone. 
Louis is obliged to remain in Provence on account of 
the elections which are just coming on — he wants 
to be re-elected and the Liberals are intriguing against 
him already. 

I am not coming to console you. I am only 
bringing my heart to keep yours company, and to 
help you to live on. I am coming to force you into 
tears; that is the only fashion in which you may buy 
the happiness of meeting him some day — for he is only 
journeying towards God, and every step you take will 
lead you nearer to him. Every duty you fulfil will 
break some link of the chain that parts you. Cour- 
age, my Louise. When my arms are about you, you 
will rise up again, and you will go to him, pure, noble, 
with all your unintentional faults forgiven, and fol- 
lowed by the good works you will dedicate to his 
name here on earth. 

These lines are written hastily, in the midst of my 
preparations and of my children — with Armand shout- 
ing, " Godmother, godmother; let's go and see her! " 
till I am half jealous. He is almost your own son. 

280 



PART SECOND 



XLVIII 



FROM THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE 
DE L'ESTORADE 

October 13th, 1833. 
Well, yes, Renee, the story you heard is true. I 
have got rid of my town-house; I have sold Chant e- 
pleurs and my farms in Seine-et-Marne; but to say 
I am mad and ruined is a little too much. Let us 
reckon up. After all I have spent, I still possess some 
twelve hundred thousand francs out of my poor Ma- 
cumer's fortune. I'll give you a faithful account of 
everything, like a dutiful sister. I invested a mil- 
lion francs in the three-per-cents when they stood at 
fifty francs; that gives me sixty thousand francs a 
year instead of the thirty thousand I got out of my 
landed property. What a burden and worry for a 
widow of seven-and-twenty, what disappointment and 
loss she must face, if she has to spend six months 
of every year in the country granting leases, listen- 
ing to grumbling farmers who only pay when they 
choose, boring herself like a sportsman in rainy weath- 
er, struggling to sell her produce and getting rid of it 
at a loss — then living in a Paris house, costing her 
ten thousand francs a year, investing her funds 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

through lawyers' offices, waiting for her interest, 
obliged to prosecute people in order to get it, study- 
ing the law of mortgage, and with business matters on 
her shoulders in the Nivernais, in Seine-et-Marne, and 
in Paris! As it stands, my fortune is a mortgage on 
the Budget. Instead of my paying taxes to the State, 
the State pays me. And every six months, without 
any expense at all, I draw thirty thousand francs at 
the Treasury, from a neat little clerk who hands me 
over thirty notes of a thousand francs each, and smiles 
at the very sight of me. " Supposing France should 
go bankrupt? " you'll say. In the first place, " Je ne 
sais pas prevoir les malheurs de si loin." But even so, 
the country would not cut down my income by more 
than half, at most, and I should still be as rich as I 
was before I made my investment. And further, from 
now until that catastrophe takes place, I shall have 
been receiving twice as much as I received in the 
preceding years. Such financial crashes occur only 
once in a century, so if I economize I shall be able to 
lay up fresh capital. And besides, is not the Comte 
de l'Estorade a peer of the semi-Republican France 
of the July Revolution? Is he not one of the props of 
the crown offered by the people to the King of the 
French? Can I feel the least anxiety, when I remem- 
ber that I number one of the presidents of the Audit 
Office, and a great financier to boot, among my 
friends? Now dare to say I'm mad. I reckon nearly 
as closely as your Citizen King. And do you know 
what it is that makes a woman so algebraically wise? 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Love! Alas! the time has come for me to explain my 
mysterious behaviour, the cause of which has escaped 
your clear-sightedness, your loving curiosity, and your 
shrewd wit. I am on the point of marrying privately, 
in a village close to Paris. I love, and I am loved. I 
love as deeply as a woman who well knows what love 
is can possibly love. I am loved as fully as a man 
should love the woman who adores him. Forgive me, 
Renee, for having hidden this from you, and from all 
the world. If your Louise has deceived every eye 
and baffled every curiosity, you must admit that my 
passion for my poor Macumer rendered this decep- 
tion indispensable. You and 1'Estorade would have 
plagued me with doubts, and deafened me with remon- 
strances; and circumstances might possibly have stood 
you in good stead. You alone know the extent of my 
constitutional jealousy, and you would have tormented 
me to no purpose. I was determined to commit what 
you, my Renee, will call my folly, on my own account, 
after my own will, my own heart, like some young girl 
eluding her parents' watchful eyes. My lover's only 
fortune consists of thirty thousand francs' worth of 
debts, which I have paid. What an opportunity for 
expostulation! You would have striven to convince 
me that Gaston was a schemer, and your husband 
would have spied upon the poor dear boy. I preferred 
making my observations on my own account. For 
the last two-and-twenty months he has been paying 
his court to me. I am twenty-seven; he is twenty- 
three. Between a woman and a man such a difference 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

in age is something enormous. Yet another cause of 
misery! And finally, he is a poet, and lives by his 
pen — which is the same thing as telling you he has 
lived on very little indeed. The dear idler spent much 
more time basking in the sun and building castles in 
the air, than sitting in the shadow of his garret and 
working at his poems. Now matter-of-fact people 
very generally tax authors, artists, and all those who 
live by their brains, with inconstancy. They espouse 
and conceive so many fancies, that their heads are not 
unnaturally supposed to react upon their hearts. In 
spite of the debts I have paid, in spite of the differ- 
ence in age, in spite of the poetry — after nine months 
of noble resistance, during which I had never even 
given him leave to kiss my hand — after the purest and 
most delicious of courtships, I am about — not to sur- 
render myself, as I did eight years ago, in all my inex- 
perience, ignorance and curiosity, but to bestow my- 
self deliberately — and with such submission is the gift 
awaited, that if I chose I might put off my marriage 
for another year. But there is not a touch of servility 
in this — it is service, not subjection. Never was there 
a nobler heart, never was there mere wit in tenderness, 
more soul in love, than in my affianced husband's case. 
Alas! my dearest, that is but natural. You shall hear 
his story in a few words. 

My friend has no name save those of Marie Gas- 
ton. He is the son, not natural, but adulterous, of 
that beautiful Lady Brandon of whom you must have 
heard, and on whom Lady Dudley avenged herself by 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

making her die of sorrow — a horrible story of which 
this dear boy knows nothing at all. Marie Gaston 
was placed by his brother, Louis Gaston, at the Col- 
lege of Tours, which he left in 1827. A few days after 
Louis Gaston had left him there, he himself left the 
country to seek his fortune — so Marie was told by an 
old woman who has acted the part of Providence to 
him. From time to time, this brother, now become a 
sailor, has written him truly fatherly letters, evident- 
ly dictated by a noble heart. But he is still strug- 
gling, far away. In his last letter, he told Marie 
Gaston he had been appointed a flag captain in the 
navy of some American Republic and that better 
times would shortly come. But for three years my 
poor poet has had no letter at all, and so devoted is 
he to his brother, that he wanted to sail away in search 
of him. The great writer, Daniel d'Arthez, prevented 
him from committing this mad act, and has taken 
the most noble interest in Marie Gaston, to whom he 
has often given, as the poet says, in his picturesque 
way, " la patee et la niche" And, indeed, you may 
conceive the difficulties in which the poor boy has 
been. He fancied genius would provide him with the 
most rapid means of making a fortune. Is not that 
enough to set one laughing for four-and-twenty hours 
on end? So, from 1828 to 1833, he has been labour- 
ing to make himself a name in literature, and has 
naturally led the most frightful life of hopes and fears, 
toil and privation, that can be conceived. Led away 
by his excessive ambition, and in spite of d'Arthez's 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

wise counsels, his debts have been constantly rolling 
up, like a snow-ball. Nevertheless, his name was be- 
ginning to attract attention when I first met him at 
the house of the Marquise d'Espard. There, at the 
first sight of him, though without his suspecting it, I 
felt a sympathetic thrill. How comes it that no one 
has fallen in love with him yet? How is it that he has 
been left for me? Oh, he has genius and wit, he has 
feeling and pride — and perfect nobility of heart always 
frightens women away. 

Had not Napoleon won a hundred fields, before 
Josephine could recognise him in the little Bonaparte 
who was her husband? This innocent boy fancies he 
knows the extent of my love for him. Poor Gaston, 
he doesn't dream of it. But I'm going to tell it to 
you — you must know it. For this letter, Renee, is 
something of a last will and testament. Ponder my 
words deeply. 

At this moment I possess the certainty that I am 
loved as much as any woman can be loved on earth, 
and I put all my faith in the adorable conjugal exist- 
ence to which I bring a love hitherto unknown to 
me. . . . Yes, at last I know the joys of a mutual 
passion. That which all women, nowadays, are ask- 
ing of love, marriage will bring to me. I feel in my 
soul that adoration for Gaston which my poor Felipe 
felt for me. I am not mistress of myself, I tremble in 
that boy's presence just as the Abencerrage once 
trembled in mine. In short, I love him more than he 
loves me. I am frightened of everything. I have the 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

most ridiculous terrors. I fear I may be forsaken; I 
tremble at the thought that I may grow old and ugly 
while Gaston is still young and handsome. I tremble 
lest I may not seem lovable enough to him. Yet I 
think I possess the powers, the devotion, the intelli- 
gence necessary not only to sustain but to increase his 
love, far from the world, and in the deepest solitude. 
If I were to fail — if the glorious poem of this secret 
love were to end — end, did I say? — if Gaston should 
some day love me less than on the day before, and I 
were to find it out — remember, Renee, it is not him, it 
is myself that I should blame. It would be no fault of 
his, it would be mine. I know my own nature — there 
is more of the mistress than of the mother in me, and I 
tell you beforehand I should die, even if I had chil- 
dren. Therefore, before I make this bond with my- 
self, I beseech you, my Renee, if misfortune should 
overtake me, to be a mother to my children. They 
will be my legacy to you. Your passionate devotion 
to duty, your precious qualities, your love of children, 
your tender affection for me, all that I know of you, 
will make death seem, I will not say sweet, but less 
bitter to me. This engagement with myself adds a 
touch of terror to the solemnity of my marriage. 
Therefore no one who knows me shall be present at 
it. Therefore it will be performed in secret. So shall 
I be free to tremble as I choose — I shall read no anx- 
iety in your eyes, and none but myself will know that 
when I sign this new marriage bond, I may be sign- 
ing my own death-warrant. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

I will not again refer to this compact between 
myself and that which I am about to become. I have 
confided it to you, only that you might know the full 
extent of your responsibilities. I am marrying with 
the full control of my own fortune, and though Gaston 
is aware that I am rich enough to enable us to live in 
comfort, he knows nothing about the amount of my 
income. In twenty-four hours I shall distribute my 
fortune according to my own will. As I don't choose 
my husband to find himself in a humiliating position, 
I have transferred an income of twelve thousand 
francs to his name. The night before our marriage 
he will find the bond in his writing-table, and if he 
were to object, I should postpone everything. I had 
to threaten I would not marry him, before I could get 
leave to pay his debts. I am tired with writing all 
these confessions to you, the day after to-morrow I 
will tell you more — but to-morrow I am obliged to 
spend the whole day in the country. 

20th October. 

Here are the measures I have adopted to screen 
my bliss from prying eyes — for I am bent on remov- 
ing every possible cause likely to excite my native 
jealousy. I am like the lovely Italian princess who, 
having sprung like a lioness upon her prey, carried 
her love off, like a lioness, to devour it in some Swiss 
village. And I only mention my arrangements, that 
I may ask you to do me another kindness — never to 
come and see us unless I have asked you to come my- 
self, and to respect my desire to live in solitude. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Two years ago, I bought some twenty acres of 
meadow-land, a strip of wood, and a fine fruit garden, 
all standing above the lakes at Ville d'Avray, on the 
way to Versailles. In the midst of these meadows, I 
have had the ground excavated, so as to make a lake 
of about three acres, in the centre of which I have left 
an island with prettily indented shores. From the 
two beautiful wooded hills that shut in the little 
valley, several charming brooks run through my 
grounds, and my architect has taken cunning advan- 
tage of them. These streams all fall into the lakes on 
the Crown property, of which we catch occasional 
glimpses. The park, which has been laid out most 
beautifully by my architect, is surrounded, according 
to the nature of the ground, by hedges, walls, and 
sunk fences, so that the most is made of every view. 
In a most delightful situation, half-way up the slope, 
and flanked by the woods, with a meadow in front, 
sloping down towards the lake, I have built a chalet 
exactly the same in external appearance as that which 
all travellers admire on the road from Sion to Brieg, 
and which so took my fancy on my way back from 
Italy. Within doors, the elegance of the chalet defies 
the competition of its most illustrious compeers. A 
hundred paces from this rustic dwelling is a charming 
little house, communicating with the chalet by an 
underground passage. This contains the kitchen, 
offices, stables and coach-house. The facade of these 
brick-built edifices, most graceful and simple in de- 
sign, and surrounded with shrubberies, is the only por- 
*9 289 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

tion of them that is visible. The gardeners live in 
another building, which masks the entrance to the 
orchards and kitchen gardens. 

The gate into the demesne, sunk in the wall that 
bounds it on the wooded side, is almost undiscover- 
able. In two or three years the plantations, which are 
already very tall, will have so grown up that the 
buildings will be quite concealed. The passer-by will 
never suspect the existence of our dwelling, except by 
the smoke he will see curling upward as he looks 
down from the hills, or else in winter time when the 
leaves are all fallen. 

My chalet has been built in the middle of a land- 
scape copied from what is known as the King's 
Garden, at Versailles, only that it looks out over my 
lake and my island. On every side are the hills, with 
their verdant masses, and the fine trees which are so 
admirably cared for under your new Civil List. My 
gardeners have orders to grow nothing but sweet- 
scented flowers and thousands of them, so that this 
corner of the earth may always be like a perfumed 
emerald. The chalet, the roof of which is hung with 
masses of Virginia creeper, is literally hidden under 
climbing plants — hops, clematis, jessamine, azaleas, 
and cobaea. The man who contrives to make out our 
windows may fairly boast of his good sight. 

The said chalet, my dear, is a pretty and comfort- 
able house, with its heating apparatus and all the 
conveniences known to our modern architects, who 
can design palaces to fit into a square of a hundred 

290 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

feet. There is a set of rooms in it for Gaston, and 
a set of rooms for me. The ground-floor consists of 
an ante-room, a parlour, and a dining-room. Above 
our own rooms are three more, intended for the nur- 
sery. I have five fine horses, a light brougham and 
a " milord," each to be drawn by a pair. We are 
only forty minutes' drive from Paris. When we have 
a fancy to listen to an opera or see a new play, we can 
after dinner, and come home to our nest at night. 
The road is a good one, and it runs under the shadow 
of our boundary hedge. My servants — the chef, the 
coachman, the groom, the gardeners, my own maid — 
are all very respectable people, for whom I have been 
looking about for the last six months, and they will be 
under my old Philippe's orders. Though I am sure of 
their attachment and discretion, I have bound them to 
me by their interest as well. Their wages are not very 
high, but they will be raised every successive year, by 
our New Year's gifts to them. They all know that the 
slightest failure in discretion, or even a doubt on that 
score, would cost them immense benefits. People 
who are in love with each other never worry their 
servants. They are naturally indulgent. So I can 
reckon on my people. 

All the precious, pretty, and dainty things that 
were in my house in the Rue du Bac are now in my 
chalet. The Rembrandt (as if it were a mere daub) is 
on the stair-case. The Hobbima hangs in his dressing- 
room, opposite the Rubens. The Titian my sister-in- 
law Maria sent me from Madrid adorns the boudoir. 

291 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

All the beautiful bits of furniture Felipe picked up 
have found appropriate places in the parlour, which 
my architect has decorated in the most delightful 
manner. Everything about my chalet is exquisitely 
simple — with that simplicity that costs a hundred 
thousand francs. The ground-floor, built over cellars 
constructed of flint stones set in concrete, and almost 
hidden by flowers and climbing shrubs, is most de- 
liciously cool, without being in the slightest degree 
damp, and a bevy of white swans floats on the lake. 

Oh, Renee, there is a stillness in my valley that 
would rejoice the dead! In the morning I am roused 
by the songs of the birds or by the whisper of the 
breeze among the poplars. When my architect was 
digging the foundation of the wall that skirts the 
woods, he came upon a little spring that runs down 
into the lake, over a bed of silvery sand, and between 
two banks of water-cress. I don't think any money 
value could be set upon that rill. Won't Gaston take 
a horror of this overperfect bliss? It is all so lovely 
that I shudder with fear. Worms burrow into the 
choicest fruits, insects attack the loveliest flowers. 
Doesn't that hideous brown grub, whose greediness 
is like the greed of death itself, always choose the pride 
of the whole forest for its prey? Already I have learnt 
that an invisible and jealous power can lay an angry 
hand on absolute felicity. Long ago, you wrote it to 
me — and, indeed, you were a true prophet. 

When I went down the day before yesterday, to 
see if my last whims had been duly comprehended, I 

292 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

felt the tears spring into my eyes, and, to the archi- 
tect's great surprise, I wrote " Payment approved " 
across the memorandum of his charges. 

" Your lawyer will refuse payment, madame," he 
said. " It's a matter of three hundred thousand 
francs." 

Like a true daughter of my seventeenth-century 
ancestresses, I added the words, " without discussion." 

" But, sir," I added, " I burden my acknowledg- 
ment with one condition. Never mention these build- 
ings, nor the grounds in which they stand, to any 
living soul. Never tell any one the name of their 
proprietor. Promise me, on your honour, that you 
will observe this clause in our agreement." 

Now do you understand the meaning of all my 
sudden journeys, all my secret goings and comings? 
Now do you see whither all the beautiful things I am 
supposed to have sold have gone? Do you under- 
stand the deep reason at the bottom of the alteration 
in my financial arrangements? My dear, love is a 
tremendous business, and the woman who wants to 
do that well must have no other. I shall never have 
any worry about money again. I have simplified my 
life, and I've played the notable housekeeper well and 
thoroughly, so that I may never have to do it again, 
except for my ten minutes' talk every morning with 
my old steward Philippe. I have watched life and its 
dangerous eddies closely. There was a day on which 
death taught me cruel things. I mean to profit by 
those teachings. To love him, to be his delight, to 

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impart variety to that which seems so monotonous to 
ordinary folk — these shall be my sole and only occu- 
pations. 

Gaston knows nothing at all as yet. At my re- 
quest, he has registered his domicile, as I have mine, 
at Ville d'Avray. We shall start to-morrow for the 
chalet. Our life there will not cost a great deal of 
money. But if I were to tell you the sum I reckon 
for the expenses of my dress, you would say, and truly, 
" She is mad! " I mean to deck myself out for him, 
every day, just as other women deck themselves for 
society. Living in the country all the year round, my 
dress will cost me twenty-four thousand francs a 
year, and the garments I wear in the daytime will not 
be by any means the most expensive. He may wear 
blouses if he likes. Don't think I want to turn my life 
into a duel, and wear myself out in inventions for feed- 
ing passion. All I desire is to avoid ever having to re- 
proach myself. There are thirteen years before me 
during which I may still be a pretty woman — I want 
to be loved more fondly on the last day of the thir- 
teenth year than I shall be loved on the morrow of my 
secret marriage. I will always be humble, always 
grateful, this time; I will never say a sharp word. 
Since it was command that wrought my ruin in the 
first instance, I will be a servant now. Oh, Renee, if 
Gaston has realized the preciousness of love as I have, 
I am certain to be happy all my days! Nature is beau- 
tiful all around my chalet, the woods arc quite en- 
trancing. At every turn the most verdant landscapes 

294 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

lie before me, and the woodland views delight the soul 
and inspire the most exquisite fancies. These woods 
are alive with love. Heaven grant I may have pre- 
pared myself something better than a gorgeous fu- 
neral pyre! The day after to-morrow I shall be 
Madame Gaston. Good God! sometimes I ask myself 
whether any Christian ought to love a man so much! 

" Well, it's legal, at all events," quoth my man of 
business, who is to witness my marriage, and who, 
when at last he perceived my object in realizing my 
fortune, cried, " This will cost me my client. " 

You, my beautiful — I dare no longer say my be- 
loved — darling, you may say, " This costs me a 
sister." 

My dearest, address your letters in future to 
Madame Gaston, Poste Restante, Versailles. We 
shall send over there for our letters every day. I do 
not want our name to be known in this neighbour- 
hood. We shall send up to Paris for all our provisions. 
By this means I hope to be able to live in mystery. 
My retreat has been ready for me for a whole year, 
and not a soul has seen it. The purchase was made 
during the disturbances which followed on the Revo- 
lution of July. My architect is the only being who has 
been seen in the country-side, nobody there knows 
any one but him, and he will never come again. 
Farewell! As I write the word, my heart is as full of 
sorrow as of joy. Does not that mean that I regret 
you as deeply as I worship Gaston? 



295 



XLIX 

FROM MARIE GASTON TO DANIEL D'ARTHEZ 

October, i8jj. 
My dear Daniel: I- want two friends to act as 
witnesses at my marriage. I beg you'll come to me 
to-morrow evening and bring our good and noble- 
hearted friend, Joseph Bridau, with you. The lady 
who is to be my wife intends to live far from the world, 
and utterly unknown — she thus anticipates my dear- 
est wish. You, who have softened the sufferings of 
my life of poverty, have known nothing of my love, 
but you will have guessed that this absolute secrecy 
was a necessity. This is why we have seen so little of 
each other for the last year. The morrow of our mar- 
riage will mark the beginning of a longer separation. 
Daniel, your heart was fashioned to understand mine 
— friendship will endure although the friend be absent. 
Perhaps I shall sometimes need you, but I shall not 
see you — in my own home, at all events. In this, 
too, she has forestalled our wishes. She has sacrificed 
her affection for the friend of her childhood, to whom 
she has been as a sister, for my sake, and I must give 
up my friend for hers. What I tell you here will doubt- 
less show you that this is not a mere passion, but 

296 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

love — full, complete, divine, founded on intimate ac- 
quaintance between the two beings who thus bind 
themselves. My happiness is pure and infinite, but — 
since a hidden law forbids any man the possession of 
unalloyed felicity — at the bottom of my heart, and 
hidden in its inmost depth, I hide a thought which 
touches me alone, and whereof she knows nothing. 
You have helped me so often, in my incessant poverty, 
that you are well aware how dreadful my condition 
has been. Whence did I draw courage to live on, 
even when hope died, as it so often did? From your 
past, my friend, and from you — who gave me such lib- 
eral consolation and such delicate help. Well, my 
dear fellow, she has paid all those pressing debts of 
mine. She has wealth, and I have nothing. How 
often, in one of my fits of idleness, have I exclaimed, 
" Oh, if some rich woman would but take a fancy to 
me! " Well, in presence of the actual fact, the jest of 
careless youth, the settled determination of poverty 
that knows no scruple, have all faded away. In spite 
of my absolute certainty of her nobility of heart, I 
feel humiliated, even while I know that my humilia- 
tion proves my love. Well, she has seen I have not 
flinched from this abasement! There is a matter in 
which, far from my protecting her, she has protected 
me — and this suffering I confide to you. Apart from 
this, dear Daniel, my dreams are realized to the very 
uttermost. I have found spotless beauty and perfect 
goodness. In fact, as the saying is, the bride is too 
beautiful. There is wit in her tenderness; she has that 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

charm and grace which impart variety to love; she is 
well taught, and understands everything; she is 
pretty, fair, slight, and yet plump — so that one would 
fancy Raphael and Rubens each had a hand in her 
composition. I don't know that I should ever have 
been able to love a dark woman as much as a fair one. 
A dark woman has always struck me as being rather 
like a boy who has been spoilt in the making. She is 
a widow, she has never had a child, she is twenty- 
seven. Though she is lively, active, and untiring, she 
knows how to find pleasure in melancholy meditation. 
In spite of these marvellous gifts, she is both dignified 
and noble looking; she has an imposing air. Though 
she comes of one of the proudest of our aristocratic 
families, she cares for me enough to overlook the mis- 
fortune of my birth. Our hidden loves had lasted for 
a considerable time: we have put each other to the 
test; we are both of us jealous; our thoughts are twin 
flashes from the same thunderbolt. With each of us, 
this is our first love, and the joys of this exquisite 
spring-tide have filled our hearts with all the most 
exquisite, the sweetest and the deepest feelings that 
imagination can conceive. Sentiment has showered 
down flowers upon us. Every one of our days has 
been complete, and when we were apart we wrote 
each other poems. It has never occurred to me to 
tarnish this glorious season with an expression of de- 
sire, although my heart was always full of it. She, a 
widow, and a free woman, has perfectly appreciated 
the tribute rendered her by this perpetual restraint — 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

it has often touched her even to tears. Thus, my dear 
Daniel, you will catch a glimpse of a really superior 
being. We have never even exchanged our first kiss, 
we have each been afraid of the other. 

" Both of us have a trifle to reproach ourselves 
with," said she to me. 

" I don't know what yours may be." 

" My marriage," was her answer. 

You, who are a great man, and who love one of 
the most remarkable women of that aristocracy in 
which I have found my Armande, will divine her na- 
ture from those words, and gauge the future happi- 
ness of your friend, Marie Gaston. 






299 



FROM MME. DE l'eSTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER 



What's this, Louise? After all the griefs a mu- 
tual passion, and that a married passion has brought 
upon you, you propose to live a life of solitude with 
another husband? After having killed one man, even 
when you lived with him in the world, you must needs 
go apart to devour another! What sorrows you are 
preparing for yourself! But I can see by the way you 
have set about it, that the whole thing is irrevocable. 
Any man who can overcome your horror of a second 
marriage must have the mind of an angel and the 
heart of a god. So I must leave you to your illusions. 
But have you forgotten all you used to say about the 
youth of men — that they have all been through vile 
experiences, and dropped their innocence on the filthi- 
est crossings of the road of life? Which has altered 
— they or you? You are very lucky to be able to be- 
lieve in happiness. I have not the heart to blame you, 
although my instinctive affection impels me to dis- 
suade you from this marriage. Yes, a hundred times, 
yes! Nature and Society do agree together to destroy 
the existence of any complete felicity, because such 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

felicity is hostile to Nature and Society — because, it 
may be, Heaven is jealous of its rights. My love for 
you, in short, dreads some misfortune, the nature of 
which no amount of foresight can reveal to me. I 
know not whence it is to come, nor from which of you 
it will spring. But, my dearest, immense and bound- 
less happiness is certain to break you down. Exces- 
sive joy is more difficult to endure than the most 
crushing sorrow. I do not say one word against him. 
You love him, and I, no doubt, have never laid my 
eyes upon him; but one of these days, I hope, when 
you feel idle, you will send me some written portrait 
of this beautiful and curious animal. 

You see I am making my mind up to the whole 
business cheerfully. For I am certain that once your 
honeymoon is over, you'll both reappear, like every- 
body else, and of your own free-will. One of these 
days, some two years hence, when you and I are out 
together, we shall drive down that road, and you'll 
say to me, " Why, there's the chalet I was never to 
have left again!" . . . and you'll laugh your merry 
laugh that shows all your pretty teeth. I've said 
nothing to Louis as yet. He would laugh at us too 
much. I shall simply tell him you are married, and 
that you wish your marriage to be kept secret. You 
need neither mother nor sister, alas! to attend you to 
your bridal-chamber. This is October. You are be- 
ginning your life in the winter, like a brave woman. If 
I were not talking about a marriage, I should say you 
were taking the bull by the horns. Well, you will al- 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ways find me the most discreet and understanding of 
friends. The mysteries of Central Africa have swal- 
lowed up many a traveller. And as far as your heart is 
concerned, you seem to me to be starting on a journey 
very like those in which so many explorers have per- 
ished, by the hand of negroes, or on those burning 
sands. But your desert is only two leagues from 
Paris, so I can waft you a cheerful " pleasant journey." 
We shall soon see you back! 



302 



LI 



FROM THE COMTESSE DE L ESTORADE TO MME. MARIE 
GASTON 

What has become of you, my dear? After two 
years of silence, Renee may really be excused for 
growing anxious about Louise. So this is love! It 
outweighs and utterly wipes out even such a friend- 
ship as ours. You'll admit, though my adoration for 
my children is greater than even your love for Gaston, 
there is a certain grandeur about the maternal feel- 
ing, which obviates any diminution of the other af- 
fections, and permits a woman to continue a sincere 
and devoted friend. I miss your letters and your 
sweet charming face. I am reduced to conjecturing 
about you, O Louise! 

As for our own story, I'll tell it as concisely as I 
can. Reading over your last letter, I notice a some- 
what tart remark as to our political position. You 
reproach us with not having resigned the office of 
Departmental Chief at the Audit Office, which we 
owed, like the title of Count, to the favour of Charles 
X. But how else — with an income of forty thousand 
francs, thirty thousand of which are settled on my 

303 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

eldest boy — was I to provide a suitable maintenance 
for Athenais, and for my poor little Rene? Does not 
our only chance lie in living on our official income, 
and carefully putting by whatever our landed prop- 
erty brings us in? In twenty years we shall have laid 
by some six hundred thousand francs, which will pro- 
vide fortunes for my daughter and for Rene, whom I 
mean to send into the navy. My poor little man will 
have ten thousand francs a year, and perhaps we may 
be able to leave him as much, besides, as will make 
his share equal to his sister's. Once he is a Post- 
Captain, my penniless boy will make a rich marriage, 
and hold as good a position in the world as his elder 
brother. 

These considerations of prudence decided us to 
accept the new order of things. The new dynasty has, 
very naturally, made Louis a Peer of France, and ap- 
pointed him a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. 
Once l'Estorade had taken the oath, he could not 
well do things by halves, and since his adhesion, he 
has rendered valuable service to the throne in the 
Chamber of Deputies. He has now attained a posi- 
tion which he will peacefully enjoy for the remainder 
of his days. He is more of a pleasant speaker than an 
orator, but that suffices for all we want to get out of 
politics. His shrewdness, his experience in matters 
of government and administration, are much appre- 
ciated, and lie is considered indispensable by men of 
every party. I may tell you that he has lately been 
offered an embassy and refused it, at my instigation. 

3°4 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

The education of my children — Artnand is now thir- 
teen, and Athenais is nearly eleven — keeps me in 
Paris, and I intend to live there until my little 
Rene's, which is now just beginning, is completed. 

A married couple that proposes to maintain its 
allegiance to the elder branch and retire to the coun- 
try on that account, must not have three children to 
educate and put out into the world. A mother, my dear 
love, must not be a Decius, more especially at a period 
when a Decius is a very uncommon bird. In another 
fifteen years l'Estorade will be able to retire to La 
Crampade on a handsome pension, and to leave Ar- 
mand here behind him with the post of Referendary, 
As for Rene, I have no doubt the navy will turn him 
into a diplomat. At the age of seven, the little rogue 
is as cunning as an old cardinal. 

Ah, Louise, I am a very happy mother. My chil- 
dren are an endless joy to me. (Senza brama sicura 
richezza!) Armand is at the College Henri IV. I 
settled he must be educated in a public establishment, 
and yet I could not make up my mind to part with 
him. So I have done as the Due d'Orleans did before 
he was Louis Philippe, and, it may have been, with an 
eye to the attainment of that dignity. Every morn- 
ing, our old man-servant Lucas, with whom you are 
acquainted, takes Armand to the college in time for 
the first class, and he fetches him home again at half 
past four. An excellent elderly tutor, who lives in 
the house, works with him at night, and wakes him 
every morning at the hour when the college pupils 
20 305 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

leave their beds. Lucas brings his luncheon to him at 
twelve, when there is a break for play. Thus, I see 
him at dinner, and before he goes to bed at night, and 
I am there every morning when he starts. Armand 
is still the delightful, affectionate, unselfish boy of 
whom you were so fond. His tutor is very well satis- 
fied with him. I have my Nais and my little fellow 
with me constantly. Their buzzing never ceases. 
But I am as great a baby as they. I have never been 
able to make up my mind to being deprived of the 
sweetness of my dear children's caressing ways. It is 
a necessity of my existence to be able to fly to Ar- 
mand's bedside whenever I choose, to look at him as 
he lies asleep, to take, or ask, or receive a kiss from 
my darling's lips. 

Nevertheless, there are drawbacks to the system 
of bringing up children under the paternal roof, and 
I fully recognise their existence. Society, like Na- 
ture, is jealous, and brooks no interference with its 
laws. Nor will it permit any disturbance of its eternal 
economy. Thus, children who are kept at home are 
exposed to the action of the outer world at much too 
early an age. Incapable as they are of divining the 
distinctions that affect the behaviour of grown-up 
folk, they subordinate everything to their own feel- 
ings and passions, instead of subordinating their de- 
sires and requests to those of other people. They 
develop a sort of false lustre, more showy than solid 
virtue — for the world is apt to put forward appear- 
ances, and dress them up in deceptive forms. When a 

306 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

child of fifteen has the assurance of a man who knows 
the world, he becomes a monster. He is an old man 
by the time he is five-and-twenty, and that precocious 
knowledge unfits him for the genuine study on which 
real and serious talent must rely. Society is a great 
comedian. Like a comedian, it receives and repro- 
duces everything, but it keeps nothing. Therefore, 
the mother who keeps her children at home, must 
make an unflinching resolution to prevent them from 
appearing in society; she must have the courage to 
stand out against their wishes and her own, and never 
to allow them to be seen. Cornelia must have kept 
her jewels in a place of safety, and I will do the same; 
for all my life is bound up in my children. 

I am thirty now, the sultriest moment of the day is 
past, the most difficult part of my journey lies behind 
me. Before many years are out, I shall be an old 
woman, and I find immense strength in the thought 
of the duties I have performed. One would fancy 
these three little creatures realize my thought and 
share it. There is a sort of mysterious understanding 
between me and the children, who have never been 
parted from me. Indeed, they fill my existence with 
delight, as though they were conscious of all the com- 
pensations they owe me. 

Armand, who for the first three years of his school 
life was slow and dreamy, and rather an anxiety to me, 
has suddenly taken a fresh turn. No doubt he has 
realized the object of these preparatory studies — an 
object children do not always perceive, that of giving 

307 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

them the habit of work, sharpening their intelligence, 
and inuring them to that obedience which is the car- 
dinal principle of social existence. A few days since, 
my dear, I enjoyed the intoxicating delight of seeing 
Armand a prize-winner at the general examination at 
the Sorbonne, at which your godson was first in trans- 
lation. At the College Henri Quatre he won two 
first-prizes — one for verses, and the other for com- 
position. I felt myself turn white when his name was 
called, and I longed to scream out, " I am his moth- 
er! " Nais was squeezing my hand so tight that she 
would have hurt me if I could have felt anything at 
such a moment. Ah, Louise, such bliss as that is 
worth many hidden loves! 

His elder brother's success has stirred my little 
Rene's ambition, and he longs to go to college too. 
Sometimes the three children make such a noise, 
shouting and running about the house, that I don't 
know how I bear it; for I am always with them. I 
never trust any one, not even Mary, to look after 
them. But there is so much happiness to be found in 
the noble work of motherhood. To see a child leave 
its game to kiss me, as if it felt a sudden need of me — 
what joy that is! And then, here again is one great 
opportunity for watching them. One of a mother's 
duties is to discern, from their earliest age, the apti- 
tudes, character, and vocation of each child. This is 
what no schoolmaster can do. Children who are 
brought up by their mothers all possess good man- 
ners and the habits of society — two acquisitions which 

308 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

may take the place of natural understanding. Where- 
as natural understanding unaided can never replace 
what men learn from their mothers only. I can 
recognise all these various shades among the men I 
meet in society, and can always detect the woman's 
influence in a young man's manners. How can any 
mother deprive her child of such advantages? As you 
see, the duties I have accomplished yield me a rich 
and precious harvest of delight. 

Armand, I am perfectly sure, will make the most 
excellent magistrate, the most upright administrator, 
the most conscientious Deputy that ever was seen. 
•And my little Rene will be the boldest, the most ad- 
venturous, and at the same time the shrewdest sailor 
that ever lived. The little rogue has a will of iron. 
He gets everything he wants; he will find his way 
round a thousand corners to reach his goal, and if the 
thousandth trick avail him nothing, he will find an- 
other. When dear Armand submits quietly, and con- 
siders the reason of everything, my Rene will storm, 
and set his wits to work, and try one thing or another, 
chattering all the while, till he ends by discovering 
some tiny crack, and then if he can contrive to get so 
much as a knife-blade into it, he'll end by driving his 
little carriage through. 

As for Nais, she is so absolutely part of me that 
I can hardly distinguish her being from my own. 
Ah, my darling, my little precious daughter! whom I 
love to dress up, whose hair I braid so fondly, twisting 
a loving thought into every curl. I am resolved she 

309 _ . 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

shall be happy. But, good heavens! when I let her 
deck herself out, when I wind green ribbons in her 
hair, and put on her dainty little shoes — a thought 
springs to my heart and brain that turns me almost 
sick. Can a mother control her daughter's fate? She 
may fall in love with a man who is not worthy of her. 
It may be that the man she loves will not love her. 
Often, as I sit looking at her, the tears come into my 
eyes. Think what it will be to part with that darling 
creature, that flower, that rose that has blossomed in 
my arms like a bud upon a rose-bush, and to give her 
to a man who will carry her quite away from me! 
You, who in the last two years have never once writ- 
ten me those three words, " I am happy " — you, I say, 
it is, who have reminded me of the dramatic side of 
marriage, so terrible to a mother whose maternal feel- 
ing is as intense as mine. Farewell! for I don't know 
why I write to you — you don't deserve that I should 
love you. Ah, do let me have an answer, my Louise! 



310 



LII 



MME. GASTON TO MME. DE L EST0RADE 

The Chalet. 
My two years' silence has roused your curiosity, 
and you wonder why I have not written to you. Well, 
my dearest Renee, words, phrases, language itself, fail 
to express my happiness. Our souls are strong 
enough to bear it — there, in two words, you have the 
whole of my story. Not the slightest effort on our 
part is necessary to insure our happiness — we are 
agreed on every subject. Never in these two years 
has there been the slightest discord in the concert; 
the smallest disagreement in the expression of our 
feelings; the tiniest difference in our most trifling de- 
sires. In short, my dear, there has not been one of 
these thousand days but has borne its own special fruit, 
not a moment that fancy has not rendered exquisite. 
Not only are we certain now that our life will never 
be monotonous, but we feel it will most likely never 
be wide enough to hold all the poetry of our love — as 
fruitful as Nature herself, and just as varied. No, not 
one disappointment have we had! We love each 
other far more dearly than on the first day, and every 
moment we discover fresh reasons for mutual adora- 
tion. Night after night, we say to each other, when 

3ii 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

we take our walk after dinner, that we must go and 
look at Paris out of curiosity: just as one would say, 
" I must go and see Switzerland." 

" Why," Gaston will cry, " there's such and such a 
boulevard to see, and the Madeleine is finished. We 
really must go and look at it." 

Pshaw! when the next morning comes, we stay in 
bed; we breakfast in our room. By the time twelve 
o'clock comes, it has grown hot, we allow ourselves a 
little siesta. Then he'll ask me to let him look at me, 
and he'll gaze at me just as if I were a picture. He quite 
loses himself in this contemplation, which, as you will 
imagine, is reciprocal. Then the tears come into our 
eyes, we both think how happy we are, and we trem- 
ble. I am still his mistress — in other words, I seem to 
love him less than he loves me. This illusion is de- 
lightful to me. There is something so charming to 
us women in seeing sentiment override desire, and 
watching our master stop short timidly, just where we 
choose him to remain. You have asked me to de- 
scribe him to you — but no woman, my Renee, can 
draw a truthful picture of the man she loves. And 
then between you and me, and prudery apart, we may 
acknowledge one strange and melancholy consequence 
of our social habits. Nothing can be farther apart 
than the man who succeeds in society, and the man 
who makes a good lover. So great is this difference, 
that the first may bear no resemblance whatever to 
the second. The man who will assume the most 
charming attitude known to the most graceful of 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

dances, when he drops a word of love into a lady's ear 
as they stand beside the fire-place, may not possess a 
single one of those hidden charms for which every 
woman longs. On the other hand, a man who strikes 
one as ugly, without charm of manner, clumsily hud- 
dled into a black evening-suit, may possess the very 
genius of the lover's passion, and never look ridiculous 
at any of those moments in which we ourselves, with 
all our external charm, may show to disadvantage. 
To discover a man who does possess that mysterious 
agreement between what he is and what he seems to 
be, who, in the secrecy of marriage, displays that in- 
nate grace which can not be given or acquired, the 
grace expressed by the ancient sculptor in the chaste 
and voluptuous embraces of his figures — that innocent 
simplicity we find in the antique poems, and which 
even in its nakedness seems to drape the soul with 
modesty — that great ideal which depends upon our- 
selves alone and is bound up with the law of harmony, 
the guiding spirit, doubtless, of all things — that 
mighty problem, in short, after which feminine fancy 
hankers ever and always, finding its living solution 
in my Gaston. 

Ah, dearest, I never knew before what love and 
youth and wit and beauty, all together, meant. My 
Gaston is never affected, he is instinctively graceful, 
and makes no effort to appear so. When we wan- 
der alone about our woods, his arm clasping my 
waist, mine resting on his shoulder, our bodies close 
together, and our heads touching, our step is so 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

equal, our movement so uniform, so gentle, so abso- 
lutely alike, that any one seeing us pass by would 
take us for a single being gliding along the gravel 
path like Homer's Immortals. This harmony runs 
through all our desires and thoughts and words. 
Sometimes, when the leaves are still wet by a passing 
shower, and the green of the grass still sparkles with 
rain, we have taken long walks without ever uttering 
a word, just listening to the falling drops and admiring 
the ruddy sunset colours that lay smooth on the tree- 
tops or broken on their trunks. At such moments, 
truly, our thoughts have been a dim and hidden 
prayer, that lifted itself up to heaven, as though to 
excuse our happiness. 

Sometimes, again, a cry will break from us both, 
at the same moment, at the sight of some sharp turn 
in the woodland path, opening on an exquisite distant 
view. If you only knew what sweetness and intensity 
there is in a kiss exchanged, almost shyly, in the 
presence of holy Nature! ... it is enough to make 
one think God had created us on purpose to pray after 
this special fashion, and we always go home more in 
love with each other than ever. In Paris, such pas- 
sionate love between two married people would ap- 
pear an insult to society. We must live for it, like 
two lovers, hidden in the woods. 

Gaston, my dear, is of middle height; like almost 
all vigorous men, he is neither fat nor thin, and very 
well built; there is a fulness in all his proportions; he 
is alert in all his movements, and will bound over a 

3M 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

ditch as lightly as any wild creature. Whatever may 
be the position in which he finds himself, he has a 
sort of instinct which always makes him find his bal- 
ance — and this is rare in the case of men who habitu- 
ally spend much time in meditation. Although he is 
dark, his skin is exceedingly white. His hair is as 
black as jet, and contrasts strongly with the fairness 
of his neck and forehead. He is very like the sad- 
looking portraits of Louis XIII. He has let his mous- 
tache grow, and his royale too, but I have made him 
shave his whiskers and beard — everybody wears them 
now. His blessed poverty has kept him pure from all 
the contamination which has ruined so many young 
men. He has magnificent teeth; his health is splendid. 
His piercing blue eyes, full of the sweetest fascination 
when they fall on me, light up and blaze like a light- 
ning flash, when his soul is stirred. Like all strong 
men of powerful intellect, he has an equability of tem- 
per that would surprise you, as it has surprised me. 
I have listened to many women's descriptions of their 
home sorrows — but all that changeableness and rest- 
lessness of the man who is dissatisfied with himself, 
who either does not choose, or does not know, how to 
grow old, whose life is full of the eternal reproach of his 
youthful follies, who carries poison in his veins, whose 
eyes always have a touch of sadness in them, who 
scolds to hide his lack of self-reliance, who makes us 
pay for one hour's peace with whole forenoons of mis- 
ery, who avenges his own incapacity for being lovable 
upon his wife, and nurses a secret spite against her 

315 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

charms — all these discomforts are unknown to youth. 
They are the proper attributes of ill-proportioned 
unions. Oh, my dear soul, mind you marry Athenais 
to a young man. If you only know how I feed on that 
constant smile that varies never-endingly with every 
turn of a keen and delicate intelligence — a speaking 
smile, with thoughts of love and silent gratitude, hov- 
ering at the corners of the lips — a smile that is a per- 
petual bond between our past and present joys. Never 
is anything forgotten between us. We have taken 
the smallest of Nature's works into the secret of 
our happiness. Everything in these delicious woods 
lives and speaks to us of ourselves. An old moss- 
covered oak, close to the keeper's house on the road, 
reminds us that once, when we were tired, we sat down 
under its shade, that Gaston told me about the mosses 
growing at our feet, explained their history to me, and 
that from those mosses we worked upward, from one 
science to another, till we reached the ends of the 
world. There is something so fraternal in our two 
minds, that I think we must be two editions of the 
same work. You'll notice I have grown literary. We 
both of us have the habit or the gift of grasping the 
whole of a matter, and seeing all its meaning, and the 
proof we constantly afford ourselves of this clearness 
of our mental vision is an ever-new delight to us. 
We have reached the point of regarding this mental 
agreement as an evidence of our love, and if ever it 
were to fail us, that failure would affect us as an act 
of unfaithfulness another couple would affect. 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

My life, full of joys as it is, would strike you, no 
doubt, as very laborious. In the first place, my dear, 
let me tell you that Louise Armande Marie de Chau- 
lieu keeps her own room in order. I could never allow 
any paid servant, any strange woman or girl, to learn 
the secrets (literary woman again) of my private and 
personal arrangements. My scruples extend to the 
most trifling of the matters indispensable to the prac- 
tice of my religion. This is not jealousy, but simple 
self-respect. And everything about my room is kept 
with all the care that a young girl in love lavishes 
upon her own adornment. I am as particular as any 
old maid. Instead of being a chaos, my dressing- 
room is a delightful boudoir. My care has provided 
for every possibility. My sovereign lord can enter 
whenever he chooses. Never is anything to be seen 
that might distress, astound, or disenchant him. 
Everything in the room — flowers, perfume, dainty 
refinement of all kinds — delights the senses. At day- 
break every morning, while he is still sound asleep, 
and without his ever having found it out, so far, I 
get up. I slip into my dressing-room, and there, with 
a skill I owe to my mother's experience, I remove 
every trace of slumber by a liberal application of cold 
water. While we sleep the skin is less active, and its 
work less thoroughly performed. It gets heated, there 
is a fog upon it, a sort of atmosphere that the eye of 
the tiniest insect might detect. Under her streaming 
sponges the woman is transformed into a girl once 
more. My bath indues me with all the fascinating 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

graces of the dawn. I comb out and perfume my hair, 
and after this careful toilet, I slip back like a mouse, 
so that when my master wakes he may find me as fresh 
as a spring morning. This way I have of blooming in 
the morning, like a newly opened flower, delights him, 
though he has never been able to discover its cause. 
My dressing for the day, which is done later, is my 
maid's concern, and takes place in a room set apart 
for the purpose. I make another toilet, as you may 
suppose, before I go to bed. Thus every day I make 
three for my lord and husband, and sometimes four — 
but this, my dear, is connected with quite different 
myths of antiquity. 

We have our occupations as well. We take a deep 
interest in our flowers, in the beautiful treasures of 
our greenhouses, and in our trees. We are serious 
botanists, passionately devoted to our flowers — and 
the chalet is full of them. Our lawns are always green, 
our flower-beds are as carefully kept as those in the 
gardens of the richest banker in the world, and really 
nothing can be more beautiful than our grounds. We 
are excessively devoted to our fruit, and we watch 
our Montreuil peaches, our forcing pits, our espaliers, 
and our standards. But fearing these country inter- 
ests might not satisfy the intellectual requirements of 
the man I adore, I have advised him to take advantage 
of the silence of our solitude to finish some of the 
plays — really fine compositions — he began to write in 
the days of his poverty. 

This is the only kind of literary work which bears 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

taking up, and laying aside, for it needs prolonged 
reflection, and does not require the polish indispen- 
sable to style. Dialogue is not a thing that can be 
written always; it must be spontaneous, it demands 
conciseness, and flashes of wit, which the mind puts 
forth just as plants put forth their flowers, and 
which must be waited on rather than sought. This 
pursuit of ideas just suits me, I am Gaston's collabo- 
rator, and thus I never leave him, even in his wander- 
ings athwart the wide field of fancy. Now you guess 
how I get through our winter evenings. Our service 
is so light, that since our marriage we have never had 
to say one word of reproach, or fault-finding to any 
of our servants. When they have been asked ques- 
tions about us, they have been sharp enough to im- 
pose upon their questioners, and have passed us off 
as the companion and secretary of their employers, 
who, they have declared, are away on a journey. 
Knowing full well that permission will never be re- 
fused, they never go out without asking leave, and 
besides, they are comfortable, and quite aware that 
nothing but their own misdoing will alter their posi- 
tion. The gardeners have leave to sell the fruit and 
vegetables we do not want; the dairy-woman does the 
same with the milk and cream and fresh butter, only 
the best of everything is kept for us. The servants 
are all delighted with their profits, and we are en- 
chanted with the abundance we enjoy and which no 
wealth can possibly procure in that dreadful Paris, 
where every fine peach costs you the interest on a 

319 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

hundred francs. There is a meaning, my dear, in all 
this! I must be the whole world to Gaston. Now the 
world is amusing, and therefore my husband must 
not be bored in his solitude. I fancied I was jealous 
in the days when I was loved and allowed myself to 
be loved. But now I know the jealousy of the woman 
who loves — real jealousy, in fact, and any glance of 
his that strikes me as careless sets me trembling. 
Every now and then I say to myself, " Supposing he 
didn't love me any more! " and I shudder. Oh, in- 
deed, I adore him, even as a Christian soul adores the 
Deity. 

Alas, my Renee, I am still childless. The moment 
will come some day, no doubt, when this retreat will 
need the cheering influence of parental love, when we 
shall both of us long to see little frocks and coats and 
little heads, dark-haired or golden, dancing and trot- 
ting among our garden-beds and along our flowery 
paths. Oh, there is something monstrous about flow- 
ers that bear no fruit! The thought of your beautiful 
children is painful to me. My life has narrowed, while 
yours has grown and spread itself abroad. Love is 
profoundly selfish, but maternity tends to widen all 
our feelings. I felt this difference deeply, as I read 
your dear and loving letter. I envied your happiness, 
when I saw how you lived again in three other hearts. 
Yes, you are happy; you have faithfully fulfilled the 
laws of social existence, whereas I stand outside all 
that. Nothing but loved and loving children can 
console a woman for the loss of her beauty. Soon I 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

shall be thirty, and at that age a woman begins a 
course of terrible internal lamentation. Beautiful as 
I still am, the limits of feminine existence are within 
my sight — what will become of me after I have 
reached them? When I am forty, he will not be forty. 
He will still be young; I shall be old. When that 
thought strikes my heart, I spend a whole hour at 
his feet, making him swear to me that the moment he 
feels the slightest diminution of his love for me, he will 
tell me instantly. But he's a child! He swears it to 
me as though his love were never to grow less, and 
he's so beautiful that . . . you understand, I believe 
him. Farewell, my dearest love! Will it be years 
again before we write to each other? Happiness is 
very monotonous in its expression. Perhaps it is be- 
cause of this difficulty that Dante strikes loving souls 
as being greater in his Paradiso than in his Inferno. 
I am not Dante, I am only your friend, and I do not 
want to bore you. But you, you can write to me. 
For in your children you possess a varied and con- 
stantly increasing happiness, whereas mine. . . . 
We'll say no more about it. I send you a thousand 
loves. 



321 



LIII 

FROM MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON 

My dear Louise: I've read and reread your 
letter, and the more I ponder it the more I feel that 
there is less of the woman than of the child in you. 
You have not altered, you have forgotten what I have 
told you over and over again — Love is a theft practised 
on the natural by the social state. It is so essentially 
short-lived that the resources of society cannot alter 
its primitive conditions. Every noble soul essays to 
turn the child into a man, but then love becomes 
what you yourself have called it — a monstrosity. So- 
ciety, my dear, desired fecundity, and when it sub- 
stituted enduring feeling for the evanescent passion 
of Nature, it created the greatest of all human in- 
stitutions, the Family — which is the eternal basis 
of social existence. Both man and woman are sacri- 
ficed to this object — for, let us not deceive ourselves, 
the father of the family bestows his activity, his 
strength, and all his fortune, on his wife. Is it not the 
wife who enjoys the benefit of almost every sacrifice? 
Are not luxury and wealth almost wholly spent on her 
who is the glory and the elegance, the sweetness and 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the beauty of the household? Oh, my dearest, you 
are making another great mistake about your life. 
The idea of being adored is very well for two or three 
spring-times in the life of a young girl, but it is quite 
inappropriate to the woman who is a wife and mother. 
A woman's vanity may be satisfied when she knows 
she can make herself adored. If you would be mother 
as well as wife, come back to Paris. Let me tell 
you again, that you will ruin yourself by happiness, 
just as many others are ruined by misfortune. Those 
things which do not weary us, such as silence, and 
bread, and air, are void of reproach because they are 
void of taste. Whereas strong-tasting things, which 
excite desire, all end by jading it. Hear me, dear 
child! Even if it were possible for me now to be loved 
by a man for whom I felt the love you bear Gaston, I 
would still be faithful to my beloved duty and my 
sweet children. To a woman's heart, my dearest, 
motherhood is a simple, natural, fruitful thing, as in- 
exhaustible as those which constitute the elements 
of existence. I remember that one day, nearly four- 
teen years ago, I embraced a life of sacrifice in sheer 
despair, just as a drowning man clings to the mast of 
his ship. But now, when my memory calls up all my 
life before me, I would still choose that idea to be the 
guiding principle of my life, for it is the safest and 
most fruitful of all. The thought of your life, founded 
on the most utter selfishness, in spite of its being hid- 
den under poetic sentiment, has strengthened my reso- 
lution. I shall never say these things to you again, 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

but I felt obliged to speak of them this last time, when 
I learnt that your happiness is still holding out against 
the most terrible of tests. 

I have thought over your life in the country, and 
this further remark, which I think it right to put 
before you, has suggested itself to me. Our life, both 
as regards the body and the heart, consists of certain 
regular movements. Any overstraining of the mech- 
anism brings either pleasure or pain. Now both 
pleasure and suffering are a fever of the soul, essen- 
tially transitory, because it would not be possible to 
bear it long. Surely, .to live in nothing but excess is 
to live a life of sickness. Your life is a sick life, 
because you force to a perpetual height of passion a 
feeling which marriage should turn into a pure and 
steady principle. Yes, my dearest, I see it clearly 
now, the glory of the household lies in that very calm, 
that deep mutual understanding, that exchange of 
good and evil, at which the vulgar scoff. Oh, how 
fine is that saying of the Duchesse de Sully, the wife 
of the great Sully, when she was told her husband, 
grave as he looked, had not scrupled to take a mis- 
tress! 

" That's very simple," she replied. " I am the 
honour of this house, and should be very sorry to play 
the part of a courtesan within it." 

You are more voluptuous than fond; you would 
fain be wife and mistress at once. You have the soul 
of Heloise and the senses of St. Theresa; you indulge 
in excesses which are sanctioned by law, and, in a 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

word, you deprave the institution of marriage. Yes, 
you who judged me so severely for my apparent im- 
morality in accepting, on the very eve of my marriage, 
the means of happiness presented to me, you who 
have bent everything to your own purposes, now de- 
serve the reproaches you then cast on me. What! 
you claim to subject both Nature and Society to your 
whim? You remain yourself, you never transform 
yourself into what a woman should do, you keep your 
young girl's wilfulness and unreasonableness, and you 
apply the most careful and mercantile calculation to 
your passion. Don't you charge a very heavy price 
for all those trappings of yours? These numerous pre- 
cautions strike me as symptomatic of a very deep dis- 
trust. Oh, dear Louise, if you could only know the 
sweetness a mother finds in her endeavour to be good 
and tender to every member of her family! All my 
natural pride and independence have melted into a 
gentle melancholy which the joys of motherhood have 
first rewarded and then dispelled. If the morning of 
my day has been troubled, the evening will be clear 
and tranquil. I fear me, it may be quite the contrary 
with your life. 

When I had come to the end of your letter I 
prayed to God that he might send you to spend one 
day among us, so that you may be converted to family 
life and all its joys, unspeakable, incessant, never- 
ending, because they are true, simple, and eminently 
natural. But alas! how can my reasoning avail 
against a mistake in which you find happiness? The 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

tears stand in my eyes as I write these last lines. I 
had honestly believed that after a few months devoted 
to your conjugal passion, satiety would bring you 
back to reason. But now I see you are insatiable, and 
that after having killed one lover, you will end by kill- 
ing love itself. Farewell, dear wanderer! I have lost 
all hope, since the letter which I hoped would have 
lured you back to social life, by its description of my 
happiness, has only served to glorify your selfishness. 
For your love is nothing but your own self, and you 
love Gaston much more for your own sake than for 
his. 



326 



LIV 

FROM MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE i/ESTORADE 

May 20th. 

Renee: It has come! disaster has fallen like a 
thunderbolt on your poor Louise, and — you'll under- 
stand the feeling — doubt to me dispels disaster, cer- 
tainty will bring me death. The day before yesterday, 
after my early toilet, I hunted everywhere for Gaston 
to take a little walk with me before breakfast. He 
was nowhere to be found. I went into the stable-yard 
and saw his mare covered with sweat — the groom was 
scraping the flecks of foam with a knife, before rub- 
bing her down. 

" Who on earth has brought home Fedelta in such 
a state? " said I. 

" My master," replied the boy. Looking at the 
mare's hocks, I saw they were covered with Paris mud 
— it is not in the least like country mud. 

" He's been to Paris," thought I. 

The idea sent a thousand others surging through 
my brain, and drove all my blood back to my heart. 
To go to Paris without telling me, to choose the hour 
when I leave him alone; to rush there and back so 
quickly as almost to knock up his horse — the terrible 

327 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

suspicion tightened round me till I almost choked. I 
moved away to a seat a few steps off, and tried to re- 
cover my self-possession. There Gaston came upon 
me looking pallid and appalling, as it seems, for he 
cried out " What's the matter? " so suddenly, and 
his voice was so full of alarm, that I rose to my feet 
and took his arm. But the strength had gone out of 
my joints, and I was obliged to sit down again. Then 
he took me up in his arms and carried me to the par- 
lour close by, whither all our frightened servants fol- 
lowed us; but Gaston dismissed them with a wave of 
his hand. After we were left alone, I was able to get 
to our room — I would not say a word — and there I 
shut myself up to weep in peace. For a good two 
hours Gaston waited outside the door, listening to 
my sobs, and with the patience of an angel, putting 
one question after another to his creature, who gave 
him no reply. At last I said, " I will see you again 
when my eyes are not red, and when my voice is 
steady." 

The second person plural which I had used, sent 
him rushing out of the house. I fetched cold water 
and bathed my eyes, I cooled my face, the door of 
our room opened, and there I found him. He had 
come back, without my having heard his footsteps. 

" What is the matter with you? " he asked. 

" Nothing," I said. " I recognised the Paris mud 
on Fedelta's tired hocks; I could not understand your 
going there without telling me, but you are free." 

" Your punishment for your wicked doubts," he 
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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

answered, " shall be not to know what my reason was 
until to-morrow." 

" Look at me," I said. 

I fastened my eyes on his, the infinite passed into 
the infinite. No, there was no sign of that cloud 
which unfaithfulness must cast over the soul, which 
must dim the clearness of a man's eyes. I pretended 
to be satisfied, though I was still anxious — for men 
can deceive and lie as well as women. We remained 
together. Oh, dearest, as I looked at him now and 
again I thought how indissolubly bound I was to him. 
What an internal tremor shook me, when he returned 
after leaving me alone for one short moment. My 
life is all in him, not in myself. I have given the lie in 
cruel fashion to your cruel letter. Did I ever feel this 
sense of dependence on that noble-hearted Spaniard 
to whom I was just what this terrible boy is to me? 
How I hate that mare! What an idiot I was to keep 
horses! But then I should have to cut off Gaston's 
feet, and keep him tied up in the cottage. You will 
conceive my demented condition when I tell you that 
such silly thoughts as these were in my mind. If love 
has not caged him, no power will ever restrain a man 
who is bored. 

" Do I bore you? " said I to him suddenly. 

" How you do torment yourself for no reason at 
all!" he answered, and his eyes were full of gentle 
pity. '' You never have been so dear to me." 

" If that's true, my dearest angel," I answered, 
" let me sell Fedelta." 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

" Sell her! " he replied. 

The answer crushed me. It was as if Gaston had 
said to me, " All the money here is yours — I am noth- 
ing, my will has no weight." If he did not think it, 
I fancied he thought it, and once more I left him to 
go to bed. Night had fallen. 

Oh, Renee, in silence and solitude, one's thoughts 
play havoc, and lead one on to suicide. The exqui- 
site gardens, the starry night, the cool breeze laden 
with the perfume of all our flowers, the valleys, the 
hills, were all gloomy and black and dreary to me. I 
felt as if I were lying at the foot of a precipice, with ven- 
omous snakes crawling over me, and poisonous plants 
about me. I could see no God in the heaven above 
me. Such a night ages a woman by years and years. 

The next morning I said to him: " Take Fedelta 
and ride away to Paris. Don't let us sell her, I am 
fond of her: she carried you." Yet he did not misun- 
derstand the tone of my voice, which betrayed the 
hidden fury I was striving to conceal. 

" Trust me," he answered, and he held out his 
hand with such a noble gesture and cast such a noble 
glance at me, that I felt myself humbled to the dust. 

" We women are all poor creatures," I exclaimed. 

" No, you love me — that's all," he said, as he 
pressed me to his breast. 

" Go to Paris without me," I said, and I made him 
understand that I had put all my suspicions away. 

He went; I thought he would have stayed. I 
won't attempt to describe my misery. I found there 

330 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

was a being within me, the possibility of whose exist- 
ence I had never realized. To begin with, my dear, 
these sort of scenes possess an indescribably tragic 
solemnity for a woman who loves; the whole of life 
appears to her in that silent moment, and no horizon 
bounds the view. A trifle becomes everything, there 
are volumes in a look, icebergs swirl down the stream 
of speech, and in one movement of the lips she may 
read her death-warrant. I had expected some re- 
turn, for surely I had proved myself noble and great- 
hearted. 

I went up on to the roof of the chalet; I watched 
him pass along the road. Ah, my dear Renee, I saw 
him disappear with a swiftness that agonized me. 

"What a hurry he is in!" was my involuntary 
thought. 

Then, when I was left alone, I fell back into a 
hell of hypothesis and a whirlpool of suspicion. There 
were moments when the certainty of his treachery 
seemed to me a blessing, compared with the horrors 
of doubt. Doubt is a duel fought within the soul, 
which causes horrid self-inflicted wounds. I went out, 
I walked about the paths, and back to the chalet, and 
out of it again, like a mad-woman. Gaston, who had 
started about seven o'clock, did not come back until 
eleven, and as it only takes half an hour to go to 
Paris through the Park of St. Cloud and the Bois de 
Boulogne, he must have spent three hours in the city. 
He arrived in triumph, bringing me an India-rubber 
riding-whip with a gold head. I have had no riding- 

33i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

whip for the last fortnight, having broken mine, which 
was old and worn out. 

" Is it for this that you have been torturing me? " 
I inquired, as I admired the workmanship of the 
trinket, the handle of which contains a scent-box. 

Then I realized that this gift concealed a fresh 
piece of duplicity. But I threw my arms quickly 
about his neck, and reproached him tenderly for hav- 
ing caused me so much misery about a trifle. He 
thought himself very clever, and then in his demean- 
our and his looks I recognised that sort of hidden joy 
which every one feels over a successful piece of trick- 
ery — a kind of flash of satisfaction and gleam of con- 
scious cleverness, which is reflected on the features and 
revealed in every movement of the body. Still looking 
at the pretty bauble, I inquired, at a moment when his 
eyes could not escape mine, " From whom did you 
get this work of art? " 

" From one of my friends, an artist." 

" Indeed! I see Verdier mounted it," and I read 
the name of the shop which was stamped upon the 
whip. 

Gaston is still very young. He coloured; I heaped 
endearments on him, to reward him for having been 
ashamed of deceiving me. I played the simpleton, 
and he fancied the whole thing had blown over. 

May 25th. 
The next day, toward six o'clock, I put on my 
riding-habit, and at seven o'clock I dropped in at 

332 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Verdier's, where I saw several whips of the same pat- 
tern. One of the shopmen recognised mine, which I 
showed him. " We sold that yesterday to a young 
gentleman," he said, and when I described that im- 
postor Gaston to him, there was no further doubt 
about the matter. 

I'll spare you any description of the palpitations 
that half choked me as I rode to Paris, and during 
this little scene, on which the fate of my life hung. By 
half past seven o'clock I was back again and Gaston 
found me walking about in a fresh morning-gown 
armed with a most deceitful appearance of indiffer- 
ence, and certain that the secret of my absence, of 
which no one but my old Philippe was aware, would 
never be betrayed. 

" Gaston," I said, as we strolled round the lake, 
" I am quite well aware of the difference between a 
work of art which love has procured as an offering for 
a particular person, and a thing which is merely one of 
many cast in a mould." 

Gaston turned pale and looked at me, as I held 
out the terrible proof that convicted him. " My 
friend," I said, " this is no riding-whip, this is a screen 
behind which you are hiding some secret." 

Thereupon, my dear, I allowed myself the pleasure 
of seeing him lose his way hopelessly, in masses of lies 
and labyrinths of falsehood, making extraordinary 
efforts to discover some wall that he might scale, but 
forced to stand his ground and face an adversary who 
ended by deliberately allowing herself to be deceived. 

333 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

As in all such scenes, this complaisance came too 
late, and besides, I had fallen into the mistake against 
which my mother had endeavoured to warn me. 
When my jealousy showed itself openly, war, with all 
its stratagems, was declared between Gaston and me. 
My dear, jealousy is an essentially stupid and brutish 
passion. I made up my mind I would suffer in silence, 
spy out everything, make quite certain, and then 
either have done with Gaston forever, or consent to 
my own misery; no other line of conduct is possible 
for a well-bred woman. What is it he is hiding from 
me? for he is hiding some secret from me. It is some 
secret about a woman. Is it some youthful liaison of 
which he is ashamed? What can it be? That what, 
my dear, is written in four letters of fire on everything 
I see. I read the fatal word on the glassy surface of 
my lake, upon my shrubberies, upon my flower-beds, 
in the clouds above me, on the ceiling, on the dining- 
table, on the pattern of my carpet. In the midst of 
my slumbers, I hear a voice that crys out, " What? " 
Ever since that morning a cruel interest has been 
added to my life, and I have known the bitterest 
thoughts that can corrode a woman's heart — the 
thought that I belong to a man whom I believe to 
be unfaithful. Oh, my dear, this life of mine touches 
both heaven and hell. Never before have I set my 
foot within this furnace — I, who have always been 
held in such holy adoration. 

" Ah," said I to myself just now, " there was a 
day when you wished you might find your way into 

334 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

the cruel and gloomy halls of suffering. Well, the 
fiends have heard your fatal wish. Forward then, 
wretched woman! " 

May jot h. 

Ever since that day, Gaston, instead of working 
easily and deliberately like a rich man who can afford 
to play with his work, sets himself tasks, like the au- 
thor who lives by his pen. He devotes four hours a 
day to finishing off two plays. 

He is in need of money! 

An inner voice breathed this thought into my ear. 
He spends hardly anything. There is no concealment 
between us. There is not a corner of his study which 
is not open to my eyes and fingers. His yearly ex- 
penses do not amount to two thousand francs. I 
know he has thirty thousand, not so much laid by as 
thrown into a drawer. You will have guessed my 
thoughts. In the middle of the night when he was 
fast asleep, I got up and went to see whether the 
money was still there. A cold shiver shook me when 
I saw the drawer was empty. That same week I dis- 
covered that he goes and fetches letters at Sevres, 
and he must tear them up the moment he has read 
them, for in spite of all my cunning I have never been 
able to find even a vestige of one. Alas! my dearest, 
in spite of my promises, in spite of all the fine vows 
I had made to myself about the whip, an impulse 
which can only have been a sort of madness seized me, 
and I followed him on one of his hasty expeditions to 
the post-office. To Gaston's horror I caught him, on 

335 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

horseback, paying the postage of a letter which he 
held in his hand. He looked at me steadily. Then 
he turned his horse about, and galloped off so swiftly 
that even then, when I should have thought my men- 
tal anguish would have prevented my feeling any bod- 
ily fatigue, I was quite exhausted by the time we 
reached the gate leading into our wood. Gaston 
never opened his lips, he rang the bell and waited, 
without speaking to me. I was more dead than alive. 
I might be mistaken in my suspicions, or I might not 
— but in either case I had spied upon him in a manner 
unworthy of Armande Louise Marie de Chaulieu. I 
had fallen down to social depths, lower than the gri- 
sette, and the low-born girl. I had descended to the 
level of courtesans, actresses, and common creatures 
— what anguish in the thought! The gate was 
opened at last, he gave his horse to his groom and I 
slipped off mine, but into his arms, which he held out 
to me. I threw my riding-skirt over my left arm, I 
passed my right through his, and we walked away, 
still in dead silence. Those hundred paces should 
surely cut off a hundred years of purgatory for me. 
At every step, thoughts crowded on me, almost vis- 
ible, darting tongues of fire under my very eyes, 
clutching at my heart — and every one with a sting 
and a venom of its own. When the groom and the 
horses were out of sight, I stopped Gaston, I looked 
at him, and with a gesture which you will imagine for 
yourself, I said, pointing to the fatal letter, which he 
still held in his right hand: 

336 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

" Let me read it." 

He gave it to me; I broke the seal and read a letter 
in which Nathan, the dramatic author, told him that 
one of our plays, which had been accepted and re- 
hearsed, was to be performed on the following Satur- 
day. The letter inclosed a ticket for a box. Although 
this turned my martyrdom to heavenly bliss, the 
demon within me still disturbed my joy by whispering, 
" Where are those thirty thousand francs? " And 
dignity and honour, and all my former self, rose up 
to prevent me from putting the question. It was on 
my lips, I knew that if I put my thoughts into words 
I should have to throw myself into the lake, and yet 
I could hardly restrain myself from speaking. Dear, 
was not that agony more than any woman could bear? 

" You are bored here, my poor Gaston," I said, as 
I gave him back the letter. " If you like, we will go 
back to Paris." 

" To Paris! why should we go back there? " said 
he. " I only wanted to know what my powers were, 
and to taste the goblet of success." 

It would be easy, while he was sitting at work, 
for me to feign surprise on opening the drawer and 
not finding the thirty thousand francs inside it. But 
would not that only serve to elicit the answer that 
such a clever man as Gaston would not fail to give me. 
" I have been helping So-and-so — a friend of mine." 

My dear, the moral of all this is that the play 
which all Paris is now running to see, owes its suc- 
cess to us, though Nathan reaps all the glory of it. I 

337 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

am one of the anonymous collaborateurs known as 

" Messrs. ." I watched the first performance 

from the back of a stage-box on the pit tier. 

July ist. 
Gaston is still working hard and running perpetu- 
ally to Paris. He is toiling at fresh plays, so as to 
have a pretext for going there, and in order to earn 
money. Three of our pieces have been accepted, and 
two more are ordered. Oh, my dearest, I am lost! I 
am walking along in the dark. I will burn down my 
house, so that I may see clearly. What does his con- 
duct mean? Is he ashamed of being rich through me? 
He is too noble-hearted a man to give a thought to 
such littleness, and besides, when such scruples as 
these begin to assail a man, they are inspired by some- 
thing which affects his heart. A man will accept any- 
thing from his wife, but he does not choose to owe 
anything to a woman whom he intends to forsake, or 
whom he has ceased to love. If he wants so much 
money, no doubt it is because he has to spend it on 
some woman. If it were for his own purposes, would 
he not use my purse without the smallest ceremony? 
We have laid by over a hundred thousand francs. To 
sum it up, my dearest love, I have wandered through 
the whole world of supposition, and after weighing 
everything well, I am convinced I have a rival. I am 
forsaken — and for whom? I must see her. 

July 1 oth. 
I have seen; I am lost. Yes, Renee, at thirty — in 
all the glory of my beauty and all the wealth of my 

338 



■' 



if 



wmt-: 








The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

intelligence, armed as I am with all the charms of 
dress, and freshness, and elegance, I am betrayed — • 
and for whom? for an Englishwoman with big feet, 
big bones, and a big chest, a sort of British cow. 
There can be no more doubt about it. This is what 
has happened to me within the last few days. 

Sick of doubt, thinking that if he had helped one 
of his friends, Gaston might have told me, taking his 
silence for an accusation, and noting that a contin- 
uous thirst for money drove him to his work, jealous 
of that work, and alarmed by his perpetual excursions 
to Paris, I ended by taking my measures — measures 
that forced me to stoop so low that I can tell you 
nothing of them. Three days ago, I learnt that Gas- 
ton, when he goes to Paris, betakes himself to a house 
in the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, where his loves are 
concealed with discretion such as was never seen be- 
fore in Paris. The porter, a very silent man, said 
little, but enough to drive me to despair. Then I 
made up my mind that I must die, and I determined 
that I would know all first. I went to Paris, I took 
a room in a house opposite that to which Gaston is in 
the habit of going, and with my own eyes I saw him 
ride into the court-yard. Then, all too soon, I learnt 
a horrible and frightful thing — this Englishwoman, 
who seems to me to be about thirty-six, calls herself 
Mme. Gaston. That discovery was my death-blow. 
Well, I saw her go into the Tuileries with two chil- 
dren . . . two children, oh, my dearest, who are the 
living image of Gaston. No one could fail to be 

339 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

struck by the scandalous resemblance. And such 
pretty children, too, sumptuously dressed, as English- 
women know how to dress their children. She has 
borne him children, that explains it all ! This English- 
woman is a sort of Greek statue taken down off some 
monument; she is as white and cold as marble, and 
walks along solemnly like a proud mother. She's 
handsome, I must admit it — but she's as heavy as a 
man-of-war. There is nothing dainty or distinguished 
about her. I am certain she is no lady. She must be 
the daughter of some village farmer in a far-away 
county, or the eleventh child of some starving clergy- 
man. I was half dead when I got home from Paris. 
On the road, a thousand thoughts assailed me, like as 
many demons. Is she a married woman? Did he 
know her before he married me? Was she the mis- 
tress of some rich man who has forsaken her, and has 
she not fallen back suddenly on Gaston's hands? I 
made endless conjectures, as if there were any use in 
hypothesis in the face of those two children. The 
next morning I went back to Paris and gave so much 
money to the porter of that house, that in answer to 
this question, " Is Madame Gaston legally married? " 
he answered: 

" Yes, mademoiselle* " 

July i 5 th. 

Dear, since that morning I have been twice as 
tender to Gaston, and I have found him more in love 
with me than ever — he is so young. A score of times 
before we get up in the morning I have it on the tip 

340 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

of my tongue to say to him, " So you really love me 
more than the woman in the Rue de la Ville 
l'Eveque? " But I dare not explain the mystery of 
my self-denial, even to myself. 

" Are you very fond of children? " I said to him. 

" Oh, yes," he answered, " but we shall have chil- 
dren of our own." 

"And how?" said I. 

" I've consulted the best doctors, and they all 
advise me to go away for a couple of months." 

" Gaston," I said, " if I had been able to love an 
absent person, I should have stayed in my convent to 
the end of my days." 

Then he began to laugh, but that word " go 
away " gave me my death. Ah, indeed, I would far 
rather throw myself out of the window than let myself 
roll down the staircase and cling to every step. . . . 

Farewell, my dearest! I have taken steps to in- 
sure that my death shall be quiet, refined, but quite in- 
evitable. I made my will yesterday. You can come 
and see me now, the doors are opened wide. Come 
quickly then, that I may bid you farewell ! My death, 
like my life, shall be full of distinction and of charm — 
I will die true to myself. 

Farewell, my dear sister-heart! You, whose af- 
fection has never changed or wavered, who, like a 
gentle moonbeam, have always cheered my heart with 
your calm light. You have not known the ardour of 
love, but neither have you tasted its poisonous bitter- 
ness. You have looked wisely at life. Farewell! 

34i 



LV 



FROM THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON 

July 15th. 
My dear Louise: I send this letter on by a 
messenger, and am hurrying after it myself. Calm 
yourself, I beg. Your last words struck me as so de- 
mented that I thought I might venture, considering 
the circumstances, on confiding the whole story to 
Louis. For I felt you must be saved from yourself. 
Though we, like you, have employed odious means, 
the result is so satisfactory that I am certain you will 
approve. I even went so far as to call in the police, 
but that is a secret between the Prefect, ourselves and 
you. Gaston is an angel — here are the facts. His 
brother died at Calcutta, where he was employed by 
some mercantile company, just when he was about to 
return to France a rich, married, and happy man. 
The widow of an English merchant had bestowed her 
immense wealth upon him. After toiling for ten years 
to provide a subsistence for his brother, whom he wor- 
shipped, and to whom he never mentioned his disap- 
pointments, lest they should distress him, he was over- 
whelmed in the famous Flalmer failure. The widow 
was ruined. The shock was so terrible that Louis 

342 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

Gaston's brain became affected. As his mind weak- 
ened, sickness took hold of his body, and he died in 
Bengal, whither he had gone to realize the remnant 
of his poor wife's fortune. The good captain had al- 
ready forwarded a sum of three hundred thousand 
francs to a banker for transmission to his brother. 
But the banker was swept away in the Halmer bank- 
ruptcy, and thus this last hope disappeared. Louis 
Gaston's widow, that handsome woman whom you 
have taken for your rival, arrived in Paris with two 
children, who are your nephews, and without a cen- 
time. The mother's jewels had barely sufficed to pro- 
vide for her own and her children's passage money. 
By means of the directions Louis Gaston had given 
the banker who was to have sent the money to his 
brother, the widow found her way to your husband's 
former place of residence. As your Gaston had dis- 
appeared without leaving a hint of whither he was 
going, the people of the house sent Mme. Louis 
Gaston to d'Arthez, the only person likely to know 
Marie Gaston's whereabouts. D'Arthez was all the 
more ready to help the poor young woman generously, 
because some four years ago, when Louis Gaston mar- 
ried, he had written to d'Arthez, whom he knew to be 
his brother's friend, to inquire about him, and find out 
how the three hundred thousand francs might be 
most safely transmitted to their destination. D'Arthez 
had replied that Marie Gaston was now rich, thanks to 
this marriage with the Baronne de Macumer. Alike in 
India and in Paris, the glorious gift of beauty be- 

343 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

stowed on both brothers by their mother, saved them 
from misfortune. 

Isn't it a touching story? D'Arthez ended natu- 
rally by writing to your husband to tell him of the 
situation of his sister-in-law and nephews, and of the 
generous purpose which chance had frustrated, but 
which the Indian Gaston had nursed with regard to 
the Gaston left in Paris. Your dear Gaston at once 
rushed up to Paris, as you will imagine. That ac- 
counts for his first excursion. In the last five years 
he has saved fifty thousand francs on the income you 
have made him accept, and with this money he has 
bought scrip to the amount of twelve thousand francs 
a year for each of his nephews, and besides, he has fur- 
nished the rooms in which his sister-in-law lives, and 
has promised to allow her three thousand francs a quar- 
ter. This explains his writing for the stage and his 
delight over the success of his first play. So Mme. 
Gaston is not your rival, and she has a perfect right to 
bear your name. A noble-hearted and delicate-minded 
man, such as Gaston, would, no doubt, conceal the 
story from you, out of fear of your generosity. Your 
husband doesn't consider what you have bestowed 
upon him as his own property. D'Arthez read me the 
letter he wrote him when he asked him to act as one of 
the witnesses at your marriage. In it Marie Gaston 
says his happiness would have been complete if he had 
possessed money of his own, and if he had not had any 
debts for you to pay. A pure heart cannot stifle this 
feeling. If it is there, it makes itself felt, and where 

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The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

it does exist its scruples and its sensitiveness may be 
easily conceived. It is very natural that Gaston 
should desire to provide secretly and suitably for 
his brother's widow, seeing the lady had originally 
sent him a hundred thousand crowns out of her own 
pocket. She is handsome and good-hearted, her man- 
ners are refined, but she is not clever. She is a moth- 
er, and you will understand that my heart went out to 
her the moment I saw her with one child in her arms, 
and the other dressed like a little lord and clinging to 
her skirts. " The children are all in all," that is her 
motto, even in the merest trifle. Thus, far from 
being angry with your darling Gaston, you ought to 
love him all the more. I have had a glimpse of him. 
He is the best-looking young fellow in Paris. Yes, 
dearest child, that one sight of him made me realize 
that a woman might well go crazy over him. His 
face is the index to his soul. If I were you, I would 
bring the widow and her two children down to the 
chalet. I'd build them a delightful cottage there, 
and they should be like my own children to me. So 
now calm your heart, and surprise your Gaston by 
playing this trick upon him. 



345 



LVI 

FROM MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE i/ESTORADE 

Ah, my dearest, hear the terrible, fatal, insolent 
words of the fool La Fayette to his master and his 
King, " It is too late ! " Oh, my life ! my beautiful life ! 
what doctor can bring it back to me? I have dealt 
my own death-blow. Alas! what was I but a will-o'- 
the-wisp, doomed to flash gaily and then die out into 
the dark! The tears pour from my eyes, and ... I 
must not weep when he is near me. ... I flee from 
him and he follows after me! My despair is all hidden 
in my soul. Dante forgot my torture when he wrote 
his Inferno. Come and see me die! 






346 



LVII 

FROM THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO THE COMTE 
DE L'ESTORADE 

The Chalet, August jtk. 

My Dear: Take the children with you and go 
back to Provence without me. I must stay with 
Louise, she has only a few more days to live. I must 
be with her and her husband, who will go mad, I think. 

Since the arrival of that note which made me fly 
to Ville d'Avray, taking the doctors with me, I have 
never left this exquisite creature, and I have not been 
able to write, for this is the fifteenth night I have 
spent out of bed. 

When I got here, I found her sitting with Gaston, 
looking beautiful, exquisitely dressed, with a merry, 
happy face. It was all a splendid fiction. There had 
been an explanation between the two young people. 
For a moment I was duped, as Gaston had been, by 
her bold front. But Louise squeezed my hand, and 
whispered: 

" We must deceive him, I am dying." 

An icy chill fell on me when I felt her hands were 
burning hot, and noticed the rouge upon her cheeks. 
I congratulated myself upon my forethought. To 

347 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

avoid alarming anybody, it had occurred to me to tell 
the doctors to go and walk in the wood till they were 
sent for. 

" You must go away," she said to Gaston. " Two 
women who haven't seen each other for five years 
have a great many secrets to tell each other, and I am 
sure Renee has something she wants to confide 
to me." 

As soon as we were alone, she threw herself into 
my arms, and could not keep back her tears. 

" What is it? " I cried. " In any case I've brought 
down the chief surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu, and Bian- 
chon. There are four of them altogether." 

"Oh, if they can save me! If only they are in 
time! Let them come in," she cried. " The very feel- 
ing that made me long for death now makes me pine 
to live." 

" But what have you done? " 

" I've done my lungs the most frightful mischief, 
all in a few days." 

" And how did you do it? " 

" I used to put myself into violent perspirations at 
night and then run out and stand beside the lake in 
the dew. Gaston thinks I have a cold . . . and I'm 
dying." 

" Send him off to Paris," said I, " I'm going to 
fetch the doctors." And off I ran like a mad-woman 
to the spot where I had left them. 

Alas, dear friend, when the consultation was over, 
not one of the great men gave me the slightest hope. 

348 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

They all think Louise will die when the leaves begin 
to fall. The darling creature's constitution has served 
her purpose in the most singular way. She was al- 
ready predisposed to the complaint she has set up. 
She might have lived for years, but now, in a few days, 
she has done herself irreparable harm. I will not tell 
you what I felt when I heard this perfectly well- 
founded verdict. You know my life has been as 
much in Louise as in myself. I sat there crushed, and 
could not even say good-bye to the merciless doctors. 
I know not how long I had been sitting with stream- 
ing eyes, wrapped in my agonizing thoughts, when I 
was roused from my stupor by a hand laid on my 
shoulder, and a sweet voice that said, " Well, so 
there's no hope for me." It was Louise; she made 
me rise and come with her to her sitting-room. 

" Don't leave me," she begged, with a supplicating 
look. " I don't want to see despair all about me. 
Above all, I want to deceive him. I shall have 
strength to do that. I am full of youth and vigour, 
and I will die on my feet. For myself, I don't com- 
plain; I shall die just as I have often wished to die, 
when I'm thirty, with my youth and beauty still un- 
touched. As for him, I should have made him miser- 
able — I can see that clearly. I have entangled myself 
in the meshes of my own loves, like a doe that strangles 
herself in her rage at being caught. Of us two, I am 
the doe, and a very wild one. My fits of unreasoning 
jealousy were already so heavy on his heart that they 
made him wretched. And on the day when my sus- 

349 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

picions met with indifference, the inevitable punish- 
ment of jealousy, I should have died. I have had 
my full share of life. There are some people who 
are supposed to have lived sixty years, and have really 
not had two years of life. On the other hand, I 
seem to be only thirty, but in reality I have had sixty 
years of love. So, for both him and me, this end is 
the best. But for us two, the case is different. You 
will lose a loving sister, and that is an irreparable loss. 
And you alone will have reason to mourn my death. 
. . . My death," she added, after a long pause, dur- 
ing which I could hardly see her through my tears, 
" carries a cruel lesson with it. My dear doctor in 
petticoats was right. Not passion, not even love, can 
be the true basis of marriage. Your life is a beautiful 
and noble life; you have clung steadily to your path, 
and grown closer and closer to your Louis; whereas, 
if conjugal life begins with an excessive ardour of 
passion, that cannot fail to cool as time goes on. I 
have fallen into a mistake twice over, and twice over 
Death's wasted fingers have snuffed out my happiness. 
They bereft me of the noblest and the most devoted 
of men, and now I am torn from the arms of the hand- 
somest, the most attractive, the most poetic husband 
woman ever had. But I shall have made acquaint- 
ance, turn about, with the most perfect soul, and the 
most exquisite form, that ever existed. In Felipe's 
case the mind subdued the body and transformed it. 
In Gaston's, heart and intellect and physical beauty 
are all equal. I shall have been worshipped till I die; 

35o 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

what more can I desire? I will make my peace with 
God, whom I have forgotten somewhat, perhaps. I 
will turn to Him with my heart full of love, and pray 
that some day He will give me back my two angels 
in Heaven. For without them Paradise would be a 
desert to me. My example would be grievous, but I 
am an exception. As such beings as Felipe or Gaston 
can never be met with, the social law agrees, in this 
matter, with the natural law. Woman is really a weak 
being, who, when she marries, should utterly sacrifice 
her will to her husband, and he, in return, should sac- 
rifice his selfishness to her. The noisy outcry our sex 
has raised, and the tears it has shed, of late, are follies 
which rightfully earn us the title of children bestowed 
upon us by so many philosophers." 

She went on talking, in that sweet voice you know 
so well, saying the most sensible things in the most 
refined fashion, until Gaston arrived with his sister-in- 
law, the two children, and the English nurse, whom 
Louise had begged him to fetch from Paris. 

" Here are my pretty executioners," she said, when 
she saw her two nephews. " Can you wonder I was 
mistaken? How T like their uncle they are! " 

She gave the kindest welcome to Madame Gaston, 
whom she begged to consider the chalet as her home. 
She did the honours of her house with the high-bred 
charm she possesses to such a marked degree. I in- 
stantly wrote to the Due and Duchesse de Chaulieu, 
the Due de Rhetore, to the Due de Lenoncourt- 
Chaulieu, and to Madeleine. It is well I did so. The 

35i 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

very next day, Louise, worn out by her exertions, was 
unable to go out, and did not get up, indeed, till din- 
ner-time. Her mother, and her two brothers, and 
Madame de Lenoncourt, came in the evening. The 
coldness between Louise and her family, arising from 
her marriage, has quite passed away. Since that even- 
ing her father and her brothers have ridden over every 
morning, and the two Duchesses spend all their even- 
ings at the chalet. Death does almost as much to 
bring people together as to part them. It puts all 
paltry passions to silence. There is something sublime 
in Louise's good sense, and grace, and charm, and 
tender feeling. Even now, in her last moments, she 
reveals the taste for which she has been so celebrated, 
and pours out the treasures of an intellect which has 
made her one of the Queens of Paris. 

" I mean to be pretty even in my coffin," she said 
to me, with that peculiar smile of hers, when she laid 
down in her bed, to linger out the last fortnight. 
There is not a sign of sickness in her room; all the 
drinks and lozenges and medical paraphernalia are hid- 
den away. 

" Am I not dying bravely? " she said yesterday, to 
the parish priest of Sevres, to whom she has given her 
confidence. 

We all treasure every moment of her, like misers. 
Gaston, whose mind has been prepared by all his 
anxiety and this cruel certainty, is full of courage, 
but it is a terrible blow to him. I should not be 
surprised if he were soon to follow his wife. Yes- 

352 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

terday, as we were walking round the lake, he said 
to me: 

" I must be a father to those two children," and 
he pointed to his sister-in-law who was walking with 
his nephews. " But though I do not intend to do any- 
thing to shorten my own life, promise me you will be a 
second mother to them, and that your husband will 
consent to accept the guardianship which I shall leave 
to him and to my sister-in-law." 

He said all this without the slightest emphasis, like 
a man who feels he is condemned. He smiles back to 
Louise whenever she smiles to him, and I am the only 
person who is not deceived. His courage is as great 
as hers. Louise would have liked to see her godson, 
but I am not sorry he should be in Provence: she 
would very likely have done things for him which 
would have made me feel very uncomfortable. 

Farewell, dear friend. 

August 25th, HER BIRTHDAY. 

Yesterday evening Louise wandered for a few 
minutes, but there was a real refinement even in her 
delirium, which proves that people of intellect do not 
lose their heads like common folk or fools. In a faint 
voice she sang a few Italian airs out of the Puritani, 
La Sonnambula, and Mose. We all stood round her 
bed in silence, and there were tears in the eyes of 
every one of us, even of her brother Rhetore, for we 
all saw her soul was slipping away. She was quite un- 
conscious of our presence, but all her old charm lin- 
gered in the tones of her weak voice, with its exquisite 
23 353 



The Memoirs of Two Young Brides 

sweetness. In the night the death agony began. At 
seven o'clock in the morning I helped her out of her 
bed myself — her strength came back to her a little, 
she wanted to sit by her window; she asked Gaston for 
his hand . . . and then, dear friend, the most charm- 
ing creature that we shall ever see upon this earth left 
us nothing but her corpse! She had received the 
sacraments the night before, unknown to Gaston, 
who had been sleeping during the sad ceremony, and 
she had begged me to read her the De Profundis in 
French, while she looked her last on the beautiful nat- 
ural surroundings she had created. She followed the 
words in her heart, and clasped her husband's hands 
as he knelt on the other side of her arm-chair. 

August 26th. 
My heart is broken! I have just been looking at 
her in her shroud — her face has grown white, and 
there are purple shadows on it. Oh, my children! I 
want my children! Bring my children to meet me! 

Paris, 1841. 



354 



CURIOUS UNPUBLISHED OR 

UNKNOWN PORTRAITS OF 

HONORE DE BALZAC 



CURIOUS UNPUBLISHED OR 

UNKNOWN PORTRAITS OF 

HONORE DE BALZAC 




SKETCH OF BALZAC 

As a young- man. 

From the drawing by Louis 

Boulanger, 1836, in the 

museum at Tours. 



The portraits of Balzac — should 
a list of them ever be attempt- 
ed — would not provide the in- 
dustrious personage who might 
undertake their methodical enu- 
meration with matter for any 
very long or very curious pam- 
phlet. 

Balzac did not, like his con- 
temporaries, much less cele- 
brated than himself, furnish the subject for innu- 
merable productions by caricaturists, painters, en- 
gravers, and lithographers. 

His portraits and caricatures are comparatively 
rare : the Print Room of the Bibliotheque Nationale 
hardly possesses more than fifteen presentments of 
Balzac, and it should be added that most of these 
are mere variations of the one monkish-looking type, 
of which Louis Boulanger's painting (1838), and the 
lithograph produced in 1840 by the Galerie de la 
Presse, are the types most frequently followed. 

357 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 

Private collectors are no better provided, and 
we have no means of tracing the evolution of this 
remarkable physiognomy from the days when the 
dweller in the garret of the Rue Lesdiguieres signed 
his work " Horace de St. Aubin " or " Lord Rh'oone," 




PORTRAIT OF BALZAC. 

Scarce lithograph by Emile Lassalle, published in 1841 in the 
Galerie des Contemporains Illustres. 

up to the finest period of his talent, when he wrote 
Les Parents pauvres and La TJidorie de la De mar die. 
This lack of portraits of Balzac, in any number, at 
that period of the century when lithography lent 
itself so willingly to the production of portraits of 
the men of the moment — when every newspaper, 
every periodical, every illustrated album, was striv- 
ing to present the greatest possible variety of con- 
temporary faces — can only be explained by the claus- 

35* 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 



tral life of toil in which the great writer spent his 
days. It was only very occasionally that the fancy 
took him to be the fashionable society man, or the 
journalist of many acquaintances. More entirely 
than any other man did he escape the indiscretions 
of a commonplace publicity, and he succeeded in 
saving himself from the little gossiping paragraphs 
and scraps of detail of a journalism which has always 
proved its eagerness to scrutinize the private exist- 
ence, all too readily revealed, of the artist and the 
novelist. 

Thanks to his life of toil and to the triple bul- 
wark of mystery which he ever carefully raised 
about him, the loves of the 
author of the Comedie Hu- 
maine were never discov- 
ered, and opportunities for 
snatching a furtive glimpse 
of his mobile features were 
few and far between. 

It cannot be urged that 
Balzac, conscious of his own 
heavy appearance, and of a 
countenance which, at the 
first blush, conveyed an im- 
pression of vulgarity, shrank from all publication of 
his own lineaments. There is no truth in this idea. 
Balzac, like all other men, was very indulgent where 
his own person was concerned. 

Though he was no coxcomb, he cannot be said 
359 




MEDALLION OF BALZAC. 

After a lithograph, 1842. 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 



to have been dissatisfied with his looks, or conscious 
of his lack of aesthetic grace; he was fond of his 
terrestrial envelope, he noted it with satisfaction, 
and the following- remark, made when he was sitting 
to David of Angers for his medallion portrait, has in 

particular been preserved. 
" Above all things, dear 
sculptor, mind you study 
my nose ; there s a whole 
world, look you, in my 
nose ! " 

One of the earliest 
known portraits of Balzac 
is that in the Tours mu- 
seum, which represents 
him at the age of five-and- 
twenty ; it presents the 
ordinary, rather common- 
place face of a provincial 
employee. Julien's litho- 
graph, published about 
1832 or 1833, in the sup- 
plement of a newspaper, 
Le Voleur, comes next in order. This Balzac of over 
thirty summers appears as a stout fellow, beaming 
like some successful tenor singer. This is evidently 
quite a fancy portrait, got up to illustrate some 
novel, and the flattered face is designed to stir the 
fancy of sentimental little work-girls. 

More typical is the curious caricature-portrait 
360 




UNSIGNED CARICATURE OF BALZAC 

Published in 1835 in the Mercure 
de France. 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 




H. DE BALZAC. 

After the portrait by L. Boulanger, 1840. 



which is repro- 
duced in this 
book, and which 
was buried in the 
position of tail- 
piece in the Mer- 
cure de France, of 
1835, a most inter- 
esting collection, 
which was the 
supplement of the 
Musee des Families, 
and the Magasin 
Pittoresque. Here 
we really have the frank Balzac, the big comic 
dandy, the man with the walking-cane, as we love 
to fancy him. This picture recalls a statuette with 

a touch of caricature, 
modelled from his fig- 
ure by Dantan, which, 
according to his con- 
temporaries, repro- 
duced with the most 
priceless fidelity his 
gait, his attitude, his 
face, his garb, his 
monumental cane, his 
very outline, in fact. 

The portrait pub- 
lished by Aubert in 




H. DE BALZAC. 

Drawn from life, 1S42. 



361 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 




SKETCH OF BALZA.C. 

Made by David d' Angers in 1845 (unpublished). 



the Galcrie de la Prcsse 
(1839), i s a charming lith- 
ograph, which would 
seem to be a study from 
the life. But it is so 
well known to Balzac 
worshippers that Ave will 
not dally over it now. 
The same cannot be as- 
serted of the de- 
~^V lightful lithograph- 
drawing by Emile 
Lassalle which ap- 
peared in 1841, in 
the Galerie des Contemporains Illustres, and has never 
been reproduced. This is a young and smiling face, 
pleasant to look 
upon, which would 
form an admirable 
frontispiece to the 
Contes Drolatiqncs. 
We give a fac-sim- 
ile of this charming 
Balzac in his arm- 
chair, a pleasing 
change from the 
type of Balzac in a 
Rabelaisian frock- 
coat, which Hedou- 

H. DE BALZAC 

in, the etcher, has in 1844. 

362 




The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 

made only too well known in engravings after Bou- 
langer's original. 

In 1845, we nn d in that same Galerie des Contem- 
porains Illustres, no lithograph this time, but a very 
curious etching, drawn and engraved by Adolphe 




H. DE BALZAC. 

After a daguerrotype taken in 1848. Only authentic portrait. 

Forlet, and representing a very elegant Balzac in- 
deed, wrapped in a dressing-gown, tall, slight, his 
face beaming with mirth and satiric humour, the 
very picture that should figure at the beginning of 
the Physiologie dn Mariage, or of that subtle Mono- 
graphic de la Presse Parisicnne, which first saw the 
light in that same year 1843. The difficulties attend- 
ing a reproduction of this etching very delicately 

363 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 




touched in a dry point, have prevented our display- 
ing- it here, although it is a hitherto unknown por- 
trait belonging to this period. We also find a sketch 
of Balzac by David d'Angers, which was photo- 
graphed at a later date, and the profile of which is 

exceedingly exact, very 
carefully worked up, and 
well deserving of study. 
Below the sketch the 
artist has written " A 
Madame de Surville, 
croquis fait de son illus- 
tre frere, par David, 
1843." We could not 
do otherwise than in- 
stantly cause this curi- 
osity to be engraved, and our readers will here find 
the profile, that of a warrior-monk and philosopher, 
whose close-pressed lips seem to have forgotten how 
to smile. 

Another portrait, lithographed for the State, and 
long since vanished, is that which appears in helio- 
gravure at the beginning of this book, and which 
gives us a respectable, substantial Balzac, comfort- 
able-looking, quite the money-making author. This 
portrait is not in general circulation, and it exactly 
reproduces, to our mind, the great novelist's per- 
sonal appearance. 

As we arc only considering in this notice those 
portraits of Balzac cither little known or unknown 

364 



BALZAC. 

After an anonymous engraving, 
1836. 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 



to collectors, or altogether unpublished, we will 
refer to the curious fact that Balzac gave a sitting 
one day to Gavarni, who, without troubling himself 
to make a pencil sketch, boldly laid hold of a big 
copper plate, and began to draw the great novelist 
on it, in dashing outline. We may take it that this 
sitting was not repeated, and that Gavarni threw his 
copper plate aside. But by a strange chance the 
plate fell one fine day into the hands of Bracque- 
mont, who used it for the first state of a landscape. 
What was his as- 
tonishment, when 
he drew his first 
proof, at discover- 
ing the bold lines 
of Gavarni's Bal- 
zac portrait below 
the various fore- 
grounds of his 
own picture ? We 
need hardly say 
that Bracquemont 
did not finish his 
engraving, and 
that the great 
etcher still treasures the profile he has so uncon- 
sciously embowered in landscape scenery. No re- 
production of this picture is possible. It is a land- 
scape puzzle. 

Nevertheless Gavarni had made other rough 
365 




BALZAC. 

After a sketch made by Eugene Giraud 
immediately after death. 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 



sketches of Balzac in dressing-gown and slippers, 
sketches no doubt made in the novelist's home, " aux 

Jardies," near Sevres. 
One of these pencil 
sketches, reproduced 
by permission of the 
owner, M. Gavarni fils, 
forms the tail-piece to 
this Note. 

One of the most au- 
thentic, most life-like, 
and most unconvention- 
al portraits of the great 
inventor of the Comc'die 
Humaine, is that once 
owned by the photog- 
rapher Nadar. This is 
a most remarkable da- 
guerrotype, which 
shows us Balzac in his 
shirt-sleeves, his brace 
ill-fastened on the left 
side, his neck and chest 
exposed by his right hand, in the attitude of a con- 
demned criminal just waking out of his last earthly 
slumber. 

But we have been able to give a reproduction 
here of the most astonishing, the noblest, the finest 
portrait of Balzac, that taken just as he had passed 
out of human ken. 

366 




SKETCH OF THE REJECTED STATUE 

By Auguste Rodin. 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 

No public reference, indeed, has ever been made 
to the admirable tinted drawing made within an 
hour oi the death of the Titan of literature, by Eu- 
gene Giraud. This fine portrait, which Madame de 
Balzac considered the best ever done of her hus- 
band, was left by her to her niece, Mile, de Saint- 
Yves (Comtesse Keller by her first marriage). By 
the kindness of Mile, de Saint-Yves, Lord Lytton, 
who was a great admirer of Balzac's genius, was en- 
abled to obtain a photograph of Giraud's drawing. 
It was at the British Embassy in Paris, and in the 
Poet-Diplomat's own private study, that we had the 
good fortune some ten years ago of beholding this 
portrait, so solemn and so touching in the sight of 
every true Balzac worshipper. Lord Lytton was 
kind enough to send us the precious relic, and thus 
it comes about that we are able to give a fac-simile 
of this priceless memorial. 

Balzac, lying dead, emaciated with suffering, looks 
a demigod already with the aureole of glory round 
his head, transfigured by the sight of the infinite eter- 
nity opening to his view. Never was there a face 
more noble, more superbly youthful, more mighty in 
its repose, than this, the image of which is Eugene 
Giraud's legacy to us. And of all the pictures of Bal- 
zac, this, which gives us the great repayer of his piti- 
ful debts, when he had climbed the last step of his 
calvary, pallid, sublime, majestic, like a Christ in the 
Tomb, will ever be the most touching in the eyes of 
those who really comprehend and worship his genius. 

367 



The Portraits of Honore de Balzac 

Neither the deliberately caricatured portraits of 
Balzac, nor Rodin's recent statue of him, possesses 
much interest for us. The author of the Deux Ma- 
rines was not a fit subject for such disfigurements. 
Our respect for his memory is too great to permit 
us to remember his caricatures, and if this series of 
portraits closes with an outline of Rodin's marble, it 
is given rather with the object of comparing the 
sculptor's attempt at idealization with the expressive 
figures which reality has bequeathed to us. 

OCTAVE UZANNE. 




SKETCH OF BALZAC. 

By Gavarni. 



368 




H 

IV 

9 H 

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